msloz's Qype profile

During my recent mini-break we booked a table for dinner here.Wow.From the second we walked in we realised we were here for a whole experience,not just to eat dinner.Welcomed into a homely drawing room we were offered drinks and canapés,given menus to browse with no hint of ‘you booked a table for 7pm,you showed up at 6:55,hurry up and sit down and eat’.The service was sublime from the start to the finish,from the sommelier who didnt mock me for not wanting red wine with my lamb to the waitresses who made darned sure mine and my partners plates were placed on our table at precisely the same time. The food was to die for.Portions were not huge but the food was rich and filling and I didn’t leave wishing they had put more on the plate.When they found out that we were celebrating our anniversary they piped ‘Happy Anniversary’onto our petit fours plate in white chocolate.Shane about the fact that it gets lost in french translation as happy birthday,but this happened to us when we celebrated in Paris one year,so it’s become a bit of an in joke!

If I had to find fault,it would be with the other diners and nothing more.I cannot comprehend why someone would pay lore attention to their iPad for the entire meal rather than their other half or their dinner,but I guess maybe whatever work they were doing paid for their stay!

Be prepared to spend more than you ever thought you would on a meal here.For the likes of me that is a treat I won’t be repeated for another year or two!Maybe next time I will save extra hard to spend a night there.What an experience that. Must be!

You’d never know it to look at me,but Im a fashion lover.So I was really excited to come to the fashion museum.Don’t expect it to be the size of New Yorks Met museum and you won’t be disappointed.

At the moment there is a sportswear exhibition on in the lead up to the Olympics.There is also a ‘behind the scenes’ exhibit where you can see changing fashion exhibited in store rooms.Peeking in at things in boxes marked ‘to sort’ appeals to my love of rummaging.I wonder if they’re hiring?!

Finally there was an exhibit focused on previous ‘it’ fashion items over the years,which I loved.

Finally,I see the mighty Manolo Blahnik will be there in March.I wonder if I can wangle another trip to go see him?

Chose Hilton for our Bath mini-break.Staff were excellent,usual Hilton standard.We arrived early and our room wasn’t ready but it was no trouble to store our bags while we did some exploring.When we got into the room we had water,pretzels,mini muffins and some other treats left for us.Brilliant!Room was very nice,well decorated with a river view.I slept like a log in the massive bed!Breakfast was,again,the usual great Hilton feast.On the Saturday it was jam-packed and the staff were obviously rather rushed off their feet so the service wasn’t quite at usual standard,but no complaints per se.We ate dinner in the restaurant on Sunday and it was lovely,food delicious and service brilliant and the waterside views were very nice.Its well placed for meandering around Bath’s streets and attractions.

The only complaint I have is a hit of a ‘my diamond shoes are too tight’one.For us this weekend was a real food fest,so we didnt plough through all our treats they left for us immediately,choosing to split it over the evenings.But we came back on Sunday to find our chocolates and little treats,all of which were packaged items rather than freshly baked,had disappeared from our room!A bit odd but hey!

I loved Bath,and I hope to visit again another time and I’ll be sure to make this hotel my number one choice!

Brilliant coffee place.Im a total milk and two kind of girl but this place really opened my eyes!We visited whilst on a weekend break and went back the next day!Try a coffee with milk (flat white in my humble opinion!) and one without.Sit near the counter and watch some sort of coffee related magic happen with apparatus that wouldn’t look out of place in a chemistry lab!Staff were friendly and the place is delightfully un-pretentious.Love it!

Le Jardin Cafe is located within the Dobbies Garden Centre at Kinross, off Junction 6 of the M90. They offer a large range of open sandwiches (on a choice of breads, I know they offer doorstep wedges of brown bread and croissants but they may offer more than that!), toasties, baked potatoes, sandwiches, salads and other hot and cold dishes. There’s also a large selection of sweet things, their home made scones are to die for (and served with delicious home made jam, I love the apple and kiwi!). There are always two choices of home made soup on offer too and the food is consistently great. There is a small but lovely breakfast menu which is also worth a mention. At Christmas time they go all out with a delicious set menu (however, you can stop by during this period and eat off the normal menu, how they cope with all that food and still provide a great fast service is beyond me!) which is just brilliant. The service here is normally fantastic too, I have been here many, many times and it was only on the last occasion I went that the waitress was a bit rude and walked off while I was halfway through my order, then mucked some of it up due to her plainly not listening to me. This is extremely uncommon, normally the waitresses are friendly, helpful, attentive, quick and other such words besides! The cafe is permanently busy, particularly at lunch times, so if you’re heading down at lunchtime, I’d suggest booking first. It is quite pricey, I suppose, but it IS worth it. You get plenty of food for your money and the food is always, always good. Im a sucker for consistency and this never fails on that. Oh, and if that wasn’t good enough, they make all their own salad dressing and due to popular demand, sell them alongside their jams. If you bring the empty bottles and jars back, you get a few pennies off your next purchase. Lovely!

Im a big fan of this coffee shop. Fast, friendly service (although one of the staff doesn’t seem to know anything about syrup flavourings for coffee, despite the fact there were dozens of them behind the counter, within my view, I was still told they didn’t have any!), the coffee is delicious, I love taking a trip down memory lane here with a Ribena (hot or cold! Reminds me of going to Macgregors as a child with my mother or grandmother), the scones are delicious as are the chocolate crispies and indeed all the food. Hot food is served quickly and I have never eaten anything unpleasant here. I think the prices are reasonable, I’d far rather give my money to a local business who makes the food on site, rather than a franchise who get their food in by the box load. I was there just the other day and can’t wait to go back, frankly!

Sadly, I’ve only been able to afford to have afternoon tea at The Old Course (but how I long to eat a meal there in both their restaurants, visit the spa and indeed stay there for a night or two!). From the second you get in the door, staff are extremely helpful and polite without being pushy. I am a sucker for good service, I can’t abide bad service in restaurants and, so help me, if one more waiter calls myself and my party 'guys’ when I tend to dine with only females, I will explode. You get none of that here! On my first visit, I had no idea where one takes afternoon tea so I was pointed in the right direction and spoken to as if I was a guest forking out for their presidential suite. The afternoon tea experience was sublime. Unmatched service (I’ve never encountered someone putting my napkin on my lap for me before! I must admit it was perhaps a step too far for me but, wow, what service!), an enormous range of teas from the more common to the extremely rare. I am not a tea drinker, so I plumped for coffee and it was very good. The food was amazing. Beautifully displayed on a cake stand, finger sandwiches with a variety of fillings (usually egg mayonnaise, smoked salmon and cucumber), homemade scones and pancakes (with home made jam and clotted cream!) and a selection of small but utterly delicious little cakes (mini meringues, lemon tarts and oh wow, the chocolate brownie is genuinely a piece of heaven). We were well attended to but also left alone to relax and enjoy the views (golf isn’t really my thing but its still nice to do some people watching). I have been twice and the standard was just as high on each occasion. I cannot wait for an opportunity to go back!

At £17pp (£27pp for a glass of pink champagne to accompany) you might think its rather expensive. However, as my partner and I realised after our first visit, if you compared the cost of the amount of food and drink we consumed in one visit (two hot drinks and a glass of water each, plenty of sandwiches, scones and cakes) against what one would pay in a franchised coffee shop or cafe, its actually a good deal. And you cannot put a price on service or luxury like that (in the bathrooms you will find individual face cloths with which to dry your hands and delicious Molton Brown toiletries to wash and moisturise them with). Served daily from 2pm-4pm, they don’t even seem to mind if you end up staying for the whole two hours (its so serene and relaxing that its rather hard not to). I would recommend this to anyone. I better start saving up to eat a meal there now!

Attended a staff 'do here a couple of years ago and have also popped in once or twice for a drink. The meal at the staff 'do was absolutely delicious, I ate three gorgeous courses and the service was brilliant, especially considering how many of us there were and the limited space. I love going on walks in the summer and popping into the bar here for a drink to take outside and sit and admire the view for a while (admittedly, their view is slightly obstructed but having lived here all my life, I can use my memory to make up for what I can’t see from my vantage point). Drinks are reasonably priced and the staff are very friendly. Definitely worth stopping in!

Rufflets is a wonderful place to get away from it all. I have eaten many lovely lunches here, in the summer a coffee outside followed by a stroll round their gardens is truly a delightful way to wind up your meal. Many years ago I used to take my grandmother out to lunch here, she was a big fan and they rather helpfully would make smaller portions of all their main courses for a reduced charge if you asked. A great idea as my grandmother loved their food but just didn’t have the appetite for large portions any more. They are very good at functions (sadly I have only attended post-funeral gatherings here, but everyone was well attended to, the food was very pleasant and the staff kept a low but attentive profile to people’s needs). I recently popped up there to purchase an afternoon tea voucher for family friends as a Christmas present, the staff were friendly and attended to me very quickly, the roaring fire and the remnants of someone else’s afternoon tea rather made me long to linger there for the rest of the day! I rather expect I too will be visiting for my own afternoon tea as soon as I possible can.

I have eaten here on both the super cheap lunch menus and the super cheap early evening menus and have always enjoyed the meal. I have always found the service to be quick and accurate. The quality of the food is consistently high, much like the other House restaurants. It is a very small place, so if being rather close to other diners bothers you, this might not be the place for you to be dining! I think they’ve done a good job with the limited space they have. Very modern, if that floats your boat (I like it, but Im more interested in the food than the decor!). Its always a good go-to place for a quick lunch, and the early start for its evening menu makes it a good place for a cheap dinner before the cinema or theatre. The loyalty card scheme is a good added bonus (if only i could remember to take one with me, I must have about a dozen cards all with one stamp in it!)