Sunday, July 20, 2014

Roxburgh Hotel near Kelso

Welcome to the Roxburghe: a beautiful country house hotel and golf course

Had lunch at this palatial mansion in the hills above Kelso owned by the Duke of Roxburghe. It is billed as a 5 star experience. I cannot confirm this, see below.

Positive
  1. Love the atmosphere and the place
  2. Nice service fairly attentive staff who smiled and were helpful
  3. Well laid out tables nice bathrooms
  4. Overall a good attempt at serving a quality lunch 
  5. Our vegetarian guest had the best meal, good pasta and simple but nice melon and sorbet
  6. My wife's roast beef while not rare enough for her was tasty if a bit tough.
  7. Desserts were nicely served and good. 

Negative
  1. Let down by frankly poor quality cooking.
  2. My minestrone would not be recognized by any Italian. Basically it was blended tinned tomatoes with a few veg and some pasta bits. It had no depth and taste. Minestrone needs good stock and is not a tomato soup but rich pasta and vegetables. 
  3. My roast pork belly was really not right. I had a slow roast pork belly as a STARTER recently at a Michelin restaurant and it was twice as big and 10 times as tasty with a superb crispy crust. The tiny piece you served was badly cooked, the skin rubbery and inedible, the pork hard and tough. It was served with bizarre attempt at modern cuisine ie two uncooked spring onions artfully draped over an uncooked piece of fennel, potatoes with no flavor at all. The gravy was nice though.

Finally when I paid the bill the reception asked me if it was a good meal and I replied no, and went into detail to be told "oh sorry".

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