The Wellington, Bristol — Restaurant in Bristol

I am writing this review at 3:15am as I lay awake in The Wellington hotel.

I booked this mini trip to escape the hectic environment of London. I wanted a calm escape in a quiet hotel room to relax and unwind. This was not the place for that. Everything seemed fine at check-in besides the confusion of where the hotel check-in actually is. This took a turn once we settled in for the nice. After returning from a nice dinner down the street I wanted to take a quick shower before bed. I turned on the shower and waited a while and the water was still cold. I played with the dials thinking maybe it was just set to a cool temperature but never found warm water. I thought possibly it was just an error on my part somehow so I went to the bathroom sink and turned only the hot knob and received cold water only. I left it running for 5-10minutes and never received even warm water, much less hot. I go to the room phone and press the reception button, the phone display says "no programmed number." Ok...so I call the phone number listed online from my cell phone, it is a wrong number. I use the desk phone in attempts to call the number listed on the back of the questionnaire, still nothing. The restaurant is closed at this point so my only way in or out of the hotel is via a fire escape so there is no way for me to find an employee. So no shower to wash off the long day before bed due to the fact that there is absolutely no hot water in our room. Ok, let's move on. How about a cup of tea to relax after the frustrating day. I give the kettle a quick rinse, add water, heat it up, and pour myself a cup of brown water filled with black chunks???? Disgusting. It's getting late so I lay down and watch a movie that is playing only to hear an intermittent knocking coming from the floor underneath the radiator. I still don't know what the knocking is but it does not stop. The knocking has continued all night in an erratic pattern. It is quiet loud. Despite the extremely aggravating knocking, I turn the television off to try to get some sleep. But no, the entire room is lit up in a green glow. I look around to see if I left a light on, I did not. It is merely the extremely bright light given off by the smoke detector in this tiny room. I can literally read a book underneath the light of the smoke detector it is so bright. Oh, and of course the sounds of the cars zipping past on the streets, but I won't hold that against them as that usually doesn't bother me.

Will I ever be able to get to sleep tonight? Will I have hot water in the morning? Only time will tell...thankfully I am only here for on night.

I see the attempting that is being made here, but it seems as though a restrauneur has decided to try their hand at running a hotel.

I would choose somewhere else for my next stay. I am extremely...

The last time we ate here as a family, the Sunday lunch was great, this is why I'm giving a rating of 2 rather than 1. We ordered the veggie roast, and it came with the usual yorkshire pudding, cauliflower cheese and side vegetables promised on the menu. However, today was a completely different experience. We didn't get any of the sides the menu promised with all roasts (all priced at £16 incidentally) and when I asked why, I was told it was because we had ordered vegan and veggie roasts and the cauliflower cheese and yorkshire pudding are not vegan. To clarify, my roast was a brie tartlet, a cheese based meal, the logic of which seemed to elude whoever the server went to speak with about the situation. After a bit of back and forth, I was given a tiny bowl of what looked like cauliflower scraped out from last week, with a tiny bit of dry cheese on it (it really was quite horrific - although as the actual meals were so stingy my partner was hell bent on eating it). Add to this that the broader roast was v disappointing this time around, with minimal vegetables or roast potatoes. Why we didn't get the normal side of veggies I'll never know. In any case, we were told by our server (who incidentally was lovely and did understand the issue) that moving forward the restaurant had decided that although all roasts were priced the same, the veggie and vegan roast would simply remove the yorkshire pudding and cauliflower cheese. Whilst it's clear this would need to be the case with the vegan roast, you'd at least expect an alternative given all roasts are priced equally, but clearly this makes no sense for the veggie roast. We got the impression that the restaurant simply didn't understand the difference between vegan and veggie, and this is echoed on other reviews where people have complained that they didn't get the advertised yorkshire pudding/cheese with their veggie meal, and the reply has stated that they couldn't have it as veggie/vegans. Frankly, this is pretty ignorant given it's 2024 and perhaps anyone replying with that needs to go back to culinary school. The reality is that this pub has a reputation of catering badly to vegetarians or vegans; this is both what we heard when moving to the area and also our experience. Several years later, we heard that they'd started doing a veggie roast, and we were quite satisfied the last time we came in for one, but sadly this restaurant has reverted to type and the veggie/vegan options are significantly inferior. I'd have to recommend avoiding this place unless you are...

Had previously left a glowing review of this place and unfortunately, today I have deleted it.

Went for a Father's day meal as usually I would be cooking the roast at home. We arrived and were pointed to a table in the corner that showed itself to be reserved 1hr45m earlier for someone else, it was not set with cutlery, nor was it easily accessible due to people generally milling around between tables.

Drinks order was eventually taken, given that this is a pub you would think 2 pints of beer and a fruit juice shouldn't be too hard to manage. 15 minutes, and a couple of gestures later the drinks arrived. We ordered food, I was the only person to have a starter which was a black pudding and sausage scotch egg with "truffle hollandaise". There was too much butter and insufficient egg content in the sauce, and the scotch egg insides were a bit springy. Then our mains arrived, 2 beef roasts and my father's day special roast which had some belly pork on, cooked at too low a temperature for proper crackling. All the roasts included a cauliflower cheese that tasted like the sauce was made with water, and the roast potatoes barely deserved the name. This was a pub roast though, the level was as you'd expect from somewhere whose primary activity is to sell drinks, you would expect them to get that right surely?

What we absolutely did not expect was as the staff came to clear our mains (which we did eat rather quicky), instead of saying "would you like dessert?" we were informed that we needed to vacate our table for another sitting at 15:30... our reservation began at 13:45 and it was at least 30 minutes after seating before we got any food. We asked for the bill in lieu of being permitted to stay for pudding. While we were finishing our drinks ready to go, we were asked to move to a different table due to a party just arriving (we had not even reached the 15:15 end of the reservation at this point). Dessert was purchased on the way home, rather than in the pub from what looked like some good options.

Service stank, badly. It seemed chaotic, and by appearances there was no communication between staff, or proper management of tables. Food came out slowly, and we were moved on before we wanted to be leaving a sour taste from what should have been a nice afternoon out.

We have had good experiences in this pub before, this was definitely not one of those.

Will be very unlikely to try again, and I recommend the same course of action to anyone...