I really like the Hotel du Vin chain and have stayed in a few different ones across the country and really enjoyed my previous stays but our experience here was a little disappointing.
The location of the hotel is brilliant, it was a great base to explore St Andrews by foot. Parking is free outside the hotel but you need to be lucky at times to grab a space. We checked in to our standard room and liked it, it was spacious and had a giant, comfy bed. After spending a bit of time in the room we realised that the extractor fan in the bathroom never stopped. I spoke to reception about it who confirmed 'that's how it's meant to be' well all I can say is WHY??? It was very loud, could hear it over the TV loud and at night when you were trying to sleep it was ridiculous. If that's how all the rooms are I can't recommend anyone stays here.
We stayed on an Autumn Deal that included bed & breakfast and dinner on one night. Breakfast was excellent with a good selection of cereals, fruit, yogurt, pastries etc. and a hot food selection cooked to order. I didn't like that the breakfast in bed option was limited to cold food though. A poor effort from a luxury hotel.
Our included dinner wasn't so great, the set menu on offer only had 3 main courses - one of these options was a vegetable baguette. When did a sandwich actually become a main meal option on a hotel dinner menu? One other option was lobster, which came with a supplement and I didn't fancy lobster and I can't remember the last option. We opted to use a £15pp spend to dine from the a la carte menu instead of the 2 course set menu. There is a good range of food on the a la carte menu with lots of grill items (steaks, burgers etc) but the risotto took my fancy and I went with that. I have to say I was very disappointed, the portion was tiny - many a tablespoon of risotto - and as the dish was served in a mini pumpkin, that had been roasted under the grill, the whole dish smelled and tasted unpleasant due to the scorched skin of the pumpkin. After a starter that neither of us enjoyed (we both had the French onion soup that any lacked flavour at all, think boiled onions in water) it unfortunately rounded off a very poor meal.
During our stay we did also did eat from the Le Brunch menu on Sunday, which was pretty good, but the poor dinner and lack of breakfast in bed options kind of ruined our overall food experience. The staff were pleasant and pretty helpful, despite a few order mishaps, but our overall stay was not great. read more