Le Parker Meridien, New York City, New York USA

Ordered at Le Parker Meridien in New York City.

Full of holiday celebrations, December in New York City is one of the busiest, most expensive times of the year to be there. Add snow to the equation and you have what seems to be a really magical time of year.

But we quickly learned that snow in New York means anything but magical. Difficulty walking around all of the human traffic, long lines inside stores, long lines waiting for taxis, and a whole lot of wet.

I wasn’t complaining though: we had used Starwood points to stay at Le Parker Meridien, a luxury hotel with a solid tourist location, within walking distance of everything we were doing. We got to escape from the madness in the streets (there was a 45 minute line to get into Abercrombie and Fitch – yikes – we weren’t going in there, but who would ever wait in that?!) to our comfortable getaway, nestled 23 floors up with a beautiful view of the snow falling in Central Park.

Saturday night we ate dinner at the Strip House in midtown – my first time (maybe last?) ever having a bone-in filet mignon. Apparently only 4 restaurants in the city have this cut of meat… now I think I know why.

Several hours after our delicious dinner, we realized dessert had been completely absent from our night. We returned to our retreat at Le Parker Meridien and immediately went from the room service menu. The apple pie seemed like an easy choice; let’s go for that. Rachel wanted a… salad for dessert, surprisingly. I suppose all that cheese is somewhat of a guilty pleasure. But what really caught my eye was The Parker Club Sandwich, a self-titled club that claimed it had “all the flavor of a club, with a left coast twist.”

Left coast twist… hmmm… Was that the avocado? Or the artichoke mayo? Or the guy from California who delivered it to our room? Prosciutto instead of bacon – was that the left coast twit? I didn’t know, but as the food sat before us in our room, I personally didn’t care.

The Parker Club Sandwich had your typical “French fry dump” on top of it as its presentation… I’ve seen this done so many times at hotels and wonder why the kitchen chose to deliver a classy sandwich this way. Do they want me to eat the French fries first? The Parker Club itself looked great, but with a mountain of greasy French fries on top, the dish as a whole looked a bit messy.

So we ate the French fries and dove right into the club sandwich.

Gotta love the prosciutto. It was very yummy. The only problem with this bacon substitute was its lack of presence. It played a very backseat role to the mediocre chicken, and it would have been nice for the prosciutto to star either as the lead or the supporting role. Instead it was more like the distant friend who appears for a scene or two in a movie but steals the show, making the audience hope they play a larger role in the sequel.

Playing off of that was the chicken, which had some muted flavors but didn’t really pack any punch…. it was as basic of white-meat chicken as you can get. For a city with such an incredible selection of food, this chicken was a letdown.

Sadly, the whole grain bread was just the wrong choice. Too hearty and intense, it made eating this club sandwich a bit dry and too bready. It overwhelmed (and negated) the flavor of this club in an unnecessary way. For the produce, the avocado, tomato, and lettuce were all great additions to this sandwich, and helped make the bread moister… I was glad these three ingredients had been chosen well.

The artichoke mayo was a great addition. Light yet flavorful, it was a wonderful accompaniment for the rest of the ingredients. Well done, Le Parker, on this creative condiment.

Overall, I thought The Parker Club was average. Each bite was good, but nothing incredible, and by the end I was just eating the ingredients, leaving the bread on the plate. It felt like this club sandwich had a bit of an identity crisis without specializing in one thing. I would have loved to have seen a standout ingredient, but even though it had such creative pieces, as a whole, the flavors this club sandwich exuded were bland. I am sorry to say it. I personally feel I could take these same ingredients and make a much better, more focused club sandwich, but that’s another story for another time.

Apparently Le Parker Meridien also has a fantastic burger bar… this I will try next time!

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