Just back from 4 night stay on business. Overall stay very enjoyable, but spoiled by some items that could be so easily sorted.
Arrival - Friendly check-in. Room fine except no bath towel or trouser press, which were quickly supplied. More concern in room 220 was the boiling hot water that came out the cold tap. Running the tap for 10 minutes didn't stop the problem. Reported it, as did one other customer, and told the cold water pipe is right beside the hot one, and a known problem. They did offer to change my room.
All four evenings - dreadfully slow service in the restaurant, despite being in there at 7pm when it opened. On Monday evening after 1 hour and 10 minutes we had not had our main course! Only 10 people in restaurant. Same at breakfast - toast arrived if you were lucky - waitress apologised when toast took 40 minutes to arrive one day - said "It's chaos in the kitchen...." which was clearly correct!
One poor meal - a fishcake starter that didn't have any fish taste at all. Thought it might be one-off but my colleague had the same result.
That's the bad points. The good points were the room was very comfortable. The staff were all excellent, and most of the food was cooked to a very high standard. The ribeye steak was superb, as was the rollmop herring starer. Lovely menu with lots of choice. Maybe too many dishes for the chef to cope with.....
Overall, I enjoyed my stay and if the terrible slowness of the restaurant service improved I would have marked it even higher. A very nice hotel, that could be top notch.
- Stafford Quality Hotel
