Farmers Daughter Hotel, Beverly Hills

If you're in LA and wanna sleep in the warm embrace of the Farmers Daughter and eat with the local TART, then you want to go to 115 S Fairfax. Easy, does it...Farmers Daughter is the name of a hotel, and TART is the restuarant at said hotel. That said, what you first thought might as well be true, because the place isn't the kind of hotel you'd want to take your wife and kids to. They went through an extensive renovation, and its way better now than a few years back, when it was a cheap $40 motel for wannabe actresses working part-time and struggling to pay the bills. Now its a not-so-cheap $210 hotel for people who just don't know better. Photo credit: Monica Almeida/The New York Times

Its across the street from CBS Studios, with the Grove Shopping Center, third street boutiques, the farmers' market and Museum Row all within hailing distance. The surroundings are actually quite rundown, the hotel building looks like an apartment complex in a poor neighbourhood and this is definitely not the LA that a tourist wants to see, or stay in. More like a commercial District with lots of prosperity 'inside' the buildings, but the streets in the area around the hotel are not quite up to expectations. For the price they charge, you can book yourself a comfy room at lots of really decent and upscale Beverly Hills hotels. But lots of people visit CBS for shows and tapings and it is quite convinient for them to stay overnight at Farmers Daughter.

The garishly painted thin walled rooms at Farmers Daughter are as sodden as the hotel itself, with barren floors and bare minimum amenities like a DVD player with a few free DVDs and rain head shower in the bathroom, the pool is tiny and the valet mandatory, even though there's no real necessity. The only redeeming factors for this dumphole are the surprisingly friendly staff, the relatively new and clean beds, sheets and towels, and the numerous restaurants in Beverly Blvd's restaurant row where you can likely expect to get decent food. So, if you're dead tired, have some urgent business to conclude in the Fairfax area, which is likely to run late into the night, you might want to give the Farmers Daughter a test run, but that's just about it. Room rates start at $184 plus taxes.

Info: 115 S Fairfax, Los Angeles CA 90036; (800) 334-1658; www.farmersdaughterhotel.com