I’m having a feeling of deja vu all over again. A few years ago I wrote about my experience of checking into a budget hotel room at Miami International Airport – See free download of chapter one of my book Future Files at www.futuretrendsbook.com. Well I’m back in America, this time experimenting with the latest hotel innovations in Westchester County, New York.

First of all let me describe the ‘lobby concept’ to you. Apparently there are three zones, one of which has “mingling sofas.” Better still, there is an informal zone (in case I find a mingling sofa too formal perhaps?).

This is defined as (and I quote) “Public privacy…it feels and functions as an upscale, informal, residential library and lounge featuring individual box seats, private communal tables, chill/recline seating, reading material and a light fare menu.” You couldn’t make nonsense like this up. But someone has and they’ve been paid for it too. What, I wonder is a “private communal table” and does the light fare menu allow me to have my cake and eat it too? Instead of spending money to confuse their guests perhaps they might consider making the internet access terminals in the lobby free instead?

But it gets better. I’m not the best airline passenger in the world, especially when I’m flying into JFK the week after al-Qaeda issued a statement along the lines of “We’re going to get you back – so there.” Anyway, there was nothing to worry about and if anything was likely to kill me it was dinner.

I ordered a shrimp cocktail because it sounded healthy. After all, how big could four shrimps be? The answer was enormous. These were lobsters in training. Fortunately, they were so big that I was distracted and missed the chance to eat an entire loaf of bread that had popped up unannounced along with what seemed like butter. It could have been a scoop of vanilla ice cream intended for the next table but we’ll never know.

Next up was a streak. Now if there’s one thing I expect to be tasty in New York it’s a steak and I was not disappointed. However, being on a health kick (to offset the alcohol) I decided to avoid the fries. I ordered a side of onion rings instead, not because I believed fried onions to be temples of culinary virtue, but because I thought that I could justify one indulgence.

Well you should have seen them. I was expecting a few rings. What I got was a separate dish containing what looked like five entire onions. They were exactly the same size as tennis balls and contained five outer skins deep-fried in thick batter. But it was OK because they came with a light dipping sauce.

Perhaps the chef had tried to get hold of the rings of Saturn, but they had proven too large for the deep fat fryer? They were tasty, but one finished me off. If I had eaten the other four I would have needed an ambulance.