Midland Hotel

This is truly one of the most fabulous looking hotels I have ever stayed in. Every detail of the painstaking renovation is perfect. The Art Deco building stands like an ocean liner on promenade, utterly gorgeous. The rooms were of a very high spec - extremely modern, yet in sympathy the original design. The bathroom was to die for - if I had one like it at home, I would have developed webbed feet by now.
It was a huge pity therefore, that the service in both the bar and the restaurant were well below par. We expected more, this place isn't cheap by any stretch. Let's start at the beginning: the beautifully designed Rotunda Bar had one member of staff who clearly had no idea how to make any of the 8 (yes.. 8)cocktails requested by one customer; we therefore had to wait 45 minutes for a beer and a glass of wine. The sensible thing to do would have been to ask us what we wanted - our order would have taken five minutes tops. But no. We went to the Long Bar to see if was easier there - it was closed... on a Friday night. Having finally got our drinks, we then went on to dinner. The menu sounded lovely, all locally produced ingredients, imaginative and interesting. For my starter I ordered the Duck Confit with Puy Lentils cooked in Liquorice and Red Wine - sounds great doesn't it? It was a disaster. The lentils were swimming in an acrid tasting broth, had clearly not been drained and the duck leg was actually half a dried out duck leg and you would need a microscope to find it. My main course was a bit more pedestrian - a steak, which I ordered medium rare - it was indeed - one half was rare, the other half medium and it was cold and dried out. From the wine list we chose the more expensive of the Chablis - we brought the cheap(er) one and had to send it back. My husband didn't fare much better, but then he's used to my cooking so he really isn't one to judge.
On to breakfast - which again, sounded great: local bacon, sausages (plural), the famous Bury Black Pudding, free range eggs etc etc... what we got was a sausage (singular), a cremated piece of black pudding (which rather than being from Bury could have come from Falluja or outer space for all I know), a mushroom the size of a 10p piece and a very hard poached egg... where is the bacon I hear you ask... there wasn't any. I asked the waitress and she shrugged and snapped 'I don't know', she made no attempt to find out either. My husband is a coffee freak, loves the stuff, hates dishwater though, which is what it resembled. It was undrinkable.

We went to The Midland for a romantic weekend break; it was ruined by the slack service and the poor food. It is such a shame that such a beautiful renovation of this stunning piece of our architectural heritage is so poorly served by the management. My Yorkshire mother had phrase for such things... 'all fur coat, and no knickers'!
Interestingly, on checking out, we got chatting to a fellow guest, his stay had been a birthday present and he and his partner were not happy at all for all the same reasons outlined above. It turned out he was the travel writer for a Scottish daily newspaper... oops! You never know who your guests are which is why service and the quality of the food should always be uppermost. I hope The Midland Hotel take notice of customer comments - then I'll go back, but not before!