San Pietro — Restaurant in England

Dinner

We travelled to the area to attend my Brothers Wedding. We arrived on Friday afternoon with Dinner booked for 6:30pm that evening.

We booked the Hotel based on the reviews on the Restaurant. We thought we would travel down a night early to enjoy a lovely date night at the highly rated Restaurant.

The Hotel is phenomenal and we do not have a single bad word to say about both the amenities and staff of the Hotel - excellent!

We arrived at the San Pietro restaurant at 6:30pm for Dinner and were seated at our table. Upon arrival, our table was hounded by flies and mosquitoes. My Husband was bitten on the face by a mosquito leading to a welt developing on his face. Obviously, we cannot expect the staff to control the ecosystem, but the volume of flying creatures was certainly alarming.

After ordering, we waited an hour for any food to arrive, while other tables had had several courses brought out and cleared away in this time frame.

Just before the food arrived, we had finished our bottle of wine, and my Husband was naturally quite frustrated, so got up and spoke with a lovely staff member and addressed both the flies/ mosquitoes and our long wait on food.

We were moved across the restaurant to another table and our food was brought out. Again, this is after an hour of waiting for our food.

The food was okay.

We ordered our dessert, which came out in a timely manner, ate, and left - after over 2hrs of being inside the restaurant.

Breakfast

Again, another disappointing experience. We had upgraded to the cooked breakfast to prepare us for a long day at the Wedding.

You have to pre order, and confirm a time slot to attend. We chose 9am. We were made that if we wished to cancel the cooked breakfast, it must be well in advance of our time slot - we assumed this would be because the food would be ready for our appointment slot or soon after and therefore would be a waste of food to cancel too close to the appointed time slot.

We arrived at 9am sharp, were not greeted for a little while, then we’re just told to take a seat at any table and take anything we’d like from the continental breakfast buffet.

The buffet - 3 bowels of fruit, some cereal, and some warm yogurt.

We sat down for breakfast at the same time as another Gentleman also staying in the hotel. We again waited, and waited, and waited for our cooked breakfast..

The Gentleman who sat at the exact same time as us, was served his cooked food, ate, and left before our food even came out.

After 45 minutes, our food arrived. Cold eggs, solid and inedible bacon, and the rest was barely warm. The food looked and tasted like it had been cooked hours earlier, and had been sat under a hot lamp for the rest of the morning.

While we were attempting to eat our Breakfast, a member of the staff (we assumed one of the Chefs) was loudly selling his restaurant decorations to a group of other diners directly behind our table.

They were pointing out decorations they wanted from the restaurant, one of which was a lamp located on the windowsill directly behind my Husband. The guests leaned over him to admire this, while we were eating - the team member then fetched a new one from his stores for them.

Obviously, the team/ staff cannot be responsible for other guests’ actions, however, we were also paying guests at both the restaurant and hotel and feel the team member who was conducting his business in breakfast restaurant should have directed the guests away from tables eating to have this interaction.

Overall, extremely disappointing and not worth the hundreds of pounds we spent on the Restaurant.

We paid, because we are honest and honourable people, and chose to book a table. We also cash tipped our server at Dinner, on top of the 10% service charge, because he did a fantastic job and was extremely polite and courteous.

Your servers should not be subjected to complaints which have occurred due to issues out of their control - which is why we made comments politely at the time, and ensured our server knew we were extremely happy...

Went for a meal for two, at short notice on a Thursday evening. We were booked in Efficiently, politely and without fuss, they asked if it was a special occasion, which it wasn't. We turned up to the restaurant where there was adequate parking and a hotel by the same name. It wasn't entirely clear which entrance was for the restaurant, however we got it correct. The restaurant itself is probably around 40 covers and the welcome was friendly, we were shown straight to our table despite being 15 mins early. Drinks were offered straight away, which is always good in my opinion, as we had some sparkling water while we perused the wine list. We ordered a gavi de gavi, it was a 2007 and had a lovely depth The menu has a couple of fixed menu options for price, we however went a la carte. Our server gave us great information about the evening specials and was charming throughout. For starters we had a daily special, octopus and black ink risotto, and a prawns, nduja and chilli dish off the menu. While we waited we were served a delightful portion of homemade focaccia with tapenade and roasted garlic, I cannot fault a part of this, it was excellent. When the starters arrived shortly after the prawn dish was the star of the two, it was spicy, well cooked, with crunchy fried bites of nduja, an amazing sauce with real depth, a first class dish. That is not to say the octopus was poor, it most definitely was not, the octopus portion was generous, was tender and well seasoned, the risotto was tasty and creamy, for me it was just a spot underdone, with only 2 or 3 grains a little chalky, but not enough to distract from the quality of the food. We had our plates cleared expertly and unobtrusively and after a short pause were given a mid course amuses bouche of arancini, based on a Bolognese, they were pleasant although didn't carry too much flavour of Bolognese, however that is harsh criticism for otherwise excellent food. Our main courses were a lobster ravioli, in a prawn and prosecco bisque which was beautifully made and presented, a generous portion of 8 or 9 Zippo lighter sized ravioli in a punchy sauce that really added depth. In addition we had a Sicilian melanzane parmigiana served with pasta crisps, parmesan puree and pesto. We also ordered a side of cauliflower cheese, which was creamy and salty with bacon crisps. The whole course was a masterclass in Italian cookery, flavours were recognisable, powerful yet well balanced, the saltiness of the pesto and parmesan puree worked wonders with the melanzane, we were both more than pleased and plates were all spotless after we had eaten. We had desserts, both of which were delightful, a chocolate fondant in the shape of a pyramid and a treacle pudding. The fondant flowed and went excellently with the peanut crumb and salted caramel ice cream. My one piece of feedback for the restaurant is that the decor and lighting are not placing the restaurant in the best light. The room is very bright, a more muted palette could up the ambience and intimacy of the room massively. However you come to a restaurant to eat and in that respect this one will not let you down in our experience, there is no doubt we will be returning, and we both look...

My wife booked one of the best rooms (£150 for a night) at this hotel for my 30th birthday weekend. We made our way from Birmingham (a 2 hour 30 min drive).

One of the reasons my wife booked this hotel in particular was that this room had a TV which was in view from the bath. When we went to the bathroom, there was a TV by the bath but the remote holder on the wall had no remote and we could not put the TV on.

We went out to eat soon after and informed the lady at the reception desk (who was pleasant in her demeanour). She said they had a 'spare' remote downstairs and will have a look.

When we came back from our meal, the same lady said the TV was not working and because of this, they will upgrade our breakfast.

Later that night, I went to shower and the temperature of the water was uncomfortably warm, almost painful. However the shower thermostat knob was jammed and the temperature could not be changed.

The following day we went down for breakfast and there was no one at the reception desk to report this to.

We proceeded to the restaurant for breakfast and the lady asked for our room and said we could help ourselves to anything on the table (the breakfast which is included by default on booking a room at the hotel). I told her that her colleague yesterday told us that we would get a complimentary breakfast upgrade due to the TV in the bathroom not working. She wasn't aware of this and went to speak to Piero (who I believe is the owner). He granted us permission to upgrade our breakfast.

The breakfast was really good and my wife and I both enjoyed our respective plates.

After breakfast we went back to the hotel to find someone to tell about the shower issue, again nobody was manning the reception area. I went back to the restaurant and told the lady about the issue we had with the shower thermostat knob not working. She said she would send someone to have a look.

Piero came upstairs quite promptly, I thanked him and let him in. As soon as he came in, he mentioned they've had a busy week and no one has complained about this; almost implying that I must be lying or caused the knob not to work.

We proceeded to the bathroom and I put the shower on. He put his hand underneath and said 'this is perfect'. A little while later, he corrected himself and said 'actually this is too cold for me'. Putting your hand underneath water is quite different to putting other parts of your body underneath it. He tried to adjust the thermostat knob and couldn't.

The response should have been to acknowledge the fault, not to mention how the temperature of the water was for him. We had paid for the room, not him.

Piero did end by saying if we are ever around again, he will look after us. However given our experience, we will not be coming again.

I think the staff (aside from the lady at reception on the first day) could do with some hospitality training as we did not feel like paying customers and did not get the warm reception hotel...