Terrible breakfast, nice staff.
So where do we start? Walking through our experience here, first stop.... coffee. There's no brewed coffee and the only option is to use a pot of tepid water (useless for brewing tea also) and Nescafé instant coffee sticks to make your own brew... no better than the coffee provided in the hotel room. Not a good start for a coffee lover (latte and espresso are available but are charged extra).
Small continental breakfast selection (boxed cereals, fruit, pastries) but very limited offering and bananas the were so brown brown and bruised you couldn't even pick them up without the skin peeling off and pears that are rock hard and under ripe.
On to the cooked breakfast. We opted for the 'Classic Breakfast'. It LOOKED great, but taste... not sure how you can make beans so bad that even my 3 year old proclaimed 'these beans are yucky!' If you're going to use an off brand, make sure they at least have some flavor to them. Mushroom and tomato were fine, but the sausage looked like it had been on a warmer for several days and was cracked and dried out; the hash brown was a poor frozen triangle; egg was low quality with very little yellow. Overall a very sad experience that left most of our plates being returned uneaten.
We ended up going for boxed cereal, as thankfully they couldn't mess that up.
The staff were good, with the waitress and manager apologizing for the food quality, but in the same breath telling me it wasn't their fault and 'they just serve what head office (Marston's) send them.
The manager suggested I leave feedback with the area manager (apparently I'm not the first person with these issues). It's a pitty they don't feel empowered enough to push back on upper management to supply them with quality food to ensure a great guest experience for their continued success as a business. I'm guessing Yelp reviews are a faster method to reach the bean counters. read more