● The Jefferson Hotel (Dupont Circle) - Just enough pomp and circumstance to keep Thomas Jefferson happy. New comforts gone old school.
● Kellari Taverna (Downtown) - Mt. Olympus comes to America's Mt. Olympus. Greek cuisine, done up for DC, without being dumbed down.
● Plume (Dupont Circle) - "What's this fork for?" whispered with a Maltese accent. Dupont's hot new haute French.

● Butter Tart Bakery (Eagle Rock/Eastside) - Andre Guerrero focuses on good coffee and pastries.
● Agura (West Hollywood) - French-Japanese in overly-stimulating atmosphere: chandeliers and a gigantor Buddha.
● W Hollywood (Hollywood) - Will undoubtedly be Hollywood's premiere hotel, catering to celebrities and the wealthy.

If we start making a list of excellent career choices, Eva Ziegler may have to play role model right at the top. The Austrian-born marketing mastermind is the "Global Brand Leader" for W Hotels and head of the global launch for Le Méridien Hotels as part of parent company Starwood Hotels & Resorts. From her home base in New York, Ziegler spends her 9 to 5 working on strategic planning (establishing the Starwood brand, scope, marketing strategies, implementing design) for hotels across the globe. Arguably, the biggest perk is that her job also includes traveling to all of these hotels (from Istanbul to Bali). In a smooth Austrian accent, the charming power player makes it all look and sound effortless, in between jet-setting to exotic locations to conduct business, of course.

Hotelier Larry Whitten is getting roasted over the policies he put in place at his newest hotel acquisition in Taos, NM. He bought the weathered adobe-style Paragon Inn hotel over the summer and made plans to renovate and reopen, as he has with some 20 other properties around the country. It was business as usual until he made the decree banning the Spanish language from the hotel, since he doesn't speak Spanish. He also requested that his Hispanic employees go by “anglicized” first names, then allegedly gave some of them the boot for noncompliance. These new policies did not go over so well in the liberal town of Taos, which has long celebrated the Spanish language and culture. Whitten is now being accused with discrimination in the workplace and racism by the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). Whitten claims that he is just trying to accommodate his out-of-town guests who most likely do not speak the language or understand Spanish names, and that he's no racist. The city of Taos, however, feels differently, and sent out a press release immediately after the skirmish hit the media.

The Joie de Vivre chain of hotels is really flexing its social media muscles by working the hell out of Twitter, Facebook and cell phones. Take note, hospitality industry. On "Mobile Mondays," you can send out a text to 888999 with the subject "JdV" and bang! you can opt in to sweet offers for the next seven days valid at JdV hotels in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, and Sacramento. You might get a coupon for free cocktails or discounted spa treatments.

Two deals go live today, one in the hotel world and one on the airline front. First up, the Leading Hotels of the World "Quest of a Lifetime" contest. The "Quest of a Lifetime" deal is pretty sweet. If you've spent any time in any one of their hotels in the last two years, you can go ahead and enter the contest. It's open to both Canadians and Americans, and all you've got to do to enter is whip up a little 150-word blurb on your "extraordinary travel experience" when you stayed in one of the Leading Hotels. Entries will be judged on creativity, originality, and how well your story fits the "quest" theme.

● Radisson Blu Royal (Tsvetnoy Boulevard) - Lux hotel slotted within the restored neo-classical Hotel Ukrania -- one of the infamous Stalin-era Seven Sisters skyscrapers.

● Ink48 (Midtown West) - Ink it in for your next Javits or midtown foray.
● Best Western President Hotel at Times Square (Midtown West) - Central Times Square location with Presidential theme, designed to please red and blue staters equally.

● Boom Boom Room (Meatpacking District) - Eighteen floors above the Thigh Line, Eyeful Tower’s Boom Boom Room layers on even more sexual innuendo. Sex, too: nothing like floor to ceiling windows revealing the glittering city at your feet for getting you in the mood. Most now spot in town. (For now.)
● Jane Hotel and Ballroom (West Village) Latest smash from Sean MacPherson and Eric Goode gets all Edwardian on the WVill. Nights can run a little wild out this way, but that’s copacetic with the kinds of guests that the Jane Hotel attracts.
● Above Allen (Lower East Side) - Lush Life, indeed. Lofty Thompson LES rooftop heated up fast. Stephen Sprouse prints harken to downtown ghosts, while shmancy $15 cocktails shout out to hood’s posher present.

TV is simply a place where people go when they get tired of thinking. -- Kevin Devitte

The three-day weekend left me limp but bored, so I attended a Gossip Girl dinner with friends. I have an impossible work week ahead of me and wanted to get my mind out of the business and back in the gutter where it belongs. However, there was no escape for me, as the storyline of "the greatest show ever" had Chuck Bass buying a club. He spends the show trying to obtain a Patrick McMullan photo of the king of nightlife, Sean MacPherson. In the real world, Sean and partner Eric Goode are building one great place after another. The Jane Hotel, the Bowery Hotel, and the Maritime, as well as B Bar and the Park. These joints will soon be joined by a couple of new locations. A very secretive pal of mine tells me that Sean and Eric very secretively just started building something on the southeast corner of 2nd Street and 2nd Avenue. My source is a very quiet guy. It's as if every word spoken takes a day off his life. If that was me, I'd have been in the ground 25 years ago.