St. Regis pampers with high-tech style

San Francisco â€”  “I’VE never seen you look happier,â€� my friend Carl said as I lay on the bed at the new St. Regis Hotel here.

It wasn’t the bed, although the Pratesi linens didn’t hurt. It was the high-tech toys that made me giddy.

From a bedside panel, I could control the Roman shades (tasteful beige) and blackout curtains, the lighting (recessed as well as bedside lamps) and the temperature in our 450-square-foot room. The touch screen also told me the time in dozens of world cities, allowed me to call the butler (“Ice, please�) or the concierge (“Boarding passes, if you would be so kind�) and room service.

Bunking down: Besides the aforementioned tech toys (plus a 42-inch plasma TV and a printer/fax) and service so gracious I felt unworthy, St. Regis guests get an Asian-inspired room that demands napping, if not on the bed, then on the 5-foot-long chaise. Muted colors (beige, more beige and a little off-white) in the 260 rooms seem an extension of the inner-harmony palette in the lobby.

Hanging around: Ah, the lobby. As you enter, you encounter a 16-foot-long tiny-flamed fireplace that runs across the front of the Ame bar. It’s a cool concept -- but on a warm afternoon it made the nearby registration area feel a bit like standing in a sauna. Wrapped in a wool blanket.

For breakfast eaters, there’s Vitrine, a small fourth-floor restaurant that’s open for morning meals only. The ground-floor, 95-seat Ame restaurant, operated by Hiro Sone and Lissa Doumani, they of Napa Valley’s Terra, serves lunch and dinner and is already garnering rave reviews for its East-West menu.

The 50-foot lap pool wasn’t open on our visit at the end of February (it should be by the end of this month), but Remede Spa, which has nine treatment rooms, was.

Going out: Just south of Market Street on 3rd, the St. Regis has easy access to Union Square shopping or the Embarcadero. The new museum of the African Diaspora is just around the corner, and the Museum of Modern Art is a few steps away. But my favorite diversion -- maybe because it reminded me of the impeccably groomed grounds at the St. Regis Monarch Bay -- was Yerba Buena Gardens just up the street, where the fountains shimmered in the evening light.

Perks & peeves: One and the same: the bathtub. Here was this deep, delicious-looking tub, but the water flowed so slowly that it took more than 40 minutes to fill. I wanted to watch a movie from the tub, but I could not get the 13-inch Sharp Aquos in the bathroom to work. This might have been my ineptitude; I had declined the butler’s invitation to explain the in-room technology.

To see the big screen in the bedroom, I had to open the partition into the room (easy) and flip myself to the other end of the tub (not so easy, thanks to the faucet). Instead of the soak, I should have taken a shower under the rain-simulating fixture. After all, anything that imitates precipitation is kind of thrilling for a Southern Californian, even if it’s just a showerhead.

St. Regis, 125 Third St., San Francisco; (415) 284-4000, www.stregis.com/sanfrancisco. Rooms $399 to $650 (suite).