The Atlantic Inn, St Mary's — Restaurant in England

We had a 5 night stay in room 6 in mid June. The room was well appointed, quite sizeable as a standard sea view and was very comfortable with great views over the harbour. There were however a few niggles that caused us frustration and would not have expected in a hotel of this popularity and compared to other St Austell hotels we have stayed in such as the Pier House in Charlestown and the Royal Castle in Dartmouth. ||1. On arrival there was a faulty bedside light fitting labelled "do not use" it was in the same state 6 days later on checkout. As a retired electrical engineer it looked to me to have an extremely easy repair solution yet nothing was done other than providing a substitute table top lamp. So whilst it caused little frustration it gave the impression of a lack of attention to detail or love for the building!||2. Having eaten in restaurants of all grades across UK and Europe staying in a hotel costing £300 a night for B&B we expected high standards. My wife has a cream intolerance so seeing a pan fried hake with vegeatbles and veloute on the menu, was advised that she could order it without the veloute and a simple substitute from chef. But there was no other sauce available or offered as a simple alternative and the dish arrived quite dry overall. In this day and age of allergies etc any quality kitchen would have this covered, so again not what we expected. We would have eaten with you more often but for this apparent lack of focus.||And finally 3. When we originally booked the Scillonian ferry crossing they advised us that we could use their luggage transfer service (Island Carriers) from boat to hotel but recommended we check with our accommodation provider before we booked it. I therefore rang the hotel and was informed "we don't do luggage transfers ourselves so go ahead and use the boats service" ok no problem! Arrival was perfect bags in foyer when we arrived for check-in, top notch service. However when we got to our room the information sheet clearly stated the hotel can indeed arrange luggage transfer to the Scillonian for our return (with the same Island Carriers company!!!) as long as we book more than 24hrs before checkout. We were leaving on the following Monday morning so went to reception on Saturday morning to book the transfers only to be advised by breakfast waiting staff that there was no-one covering reception, but they would leave a note to get it sorted - which they duly did. I checked at an unstaffed reception Sunday evening and the note had gone so assumed all had been dealt with. Imagine our disappointment/annoyance on check-out Monday being told the transfers had not been booked and could not have been as "reception is not staffed on weekends"!!! To be fair the young woman on reception apologised and even offered to transfer the cases herself, but the whole experience summed up our impression that the left hand does not know what the right hand was doing and furthermore a clear lack of knowledge of their business processes across their team members. Solution: change room info sheet to "Monday transfers need to be booked with reception on Friday" - simple AND ensure all of you front of house staff know how the hotel works...

Our experience and the food quality was excellent. However the Atlantic desperately need to have a good ‘front of house’ person to deal with bookings and general coordination there. We booked a table through the app/website and there was no mention of dogs not being allowed in the ‘restaurant’. We had no idea there was a separate restaurant to the general pub area and we just wanted to be sure we had a table for 6 booked. As we arrived an hour early to have drinks before we ate, I checked all was good for our 8pm booking only to find the sign saying No Dogs in the Restaurant. The staff member who discussed the issue said she would sort out an alternative arrangement and disappeared presumably to coordinate that. At 7.50 we checked where we were to be seated only to find no-one knew of the issue and the staff member had finished for the evening. We were lucky to have found a large enough table in the pub by that time as by 8pm people were drifting. We were told carvery is available on Sundays so all decided to have that, paid at the bar and went to the carvery selection, only to be told the carvery finishes at 8pm!! The chef agreed to quickly prepare additional veg options for us as fortunately there was enough meat left over for the six of us. Our meal in the end was very good but only by luck. If we had not found a table to accommodate the fact we had a dog with us, we’d have had nowhere to sit. If we’d gone to the carvery a couple of minutes later it would’ve been cleared and all remaining food thrown away. Fortunately we had a good experience but the Atlantic needs better communication all round and a more visible and prominent...

Great location. Convenient for the Island boats. The rooms are all functional with what you would need. WiFi was surprisingly good within the room. The twin beds were single options. Not good when you are tall. They didn't have a proper blanket, duvets are too hot for me. Tea, Coffee and Chocolate were plentiful and the biscuits were appreciated.

You have to book a time slot for breakfast. Coffee was restricted to filter coffee. But you could get other types at the bar. Breakfast is plentiful and flexible for fussy eaters. The restaurant was very good. I had squid, steak (M) and sticky toffee pudding with banana ice cream. It was the best meal I have had in a long time. All of the courses were perfectly cooked. I just couldn't fault it. They earned a generous tip. Good chefs who take pride in their work are hard to come by. I hope they don't lose her/him.

The staff are helpful and pleasant. If there was one thing they could do, it would be to put a sign on a stand that says wait to be seated, when you arrive for breakfast. It would help the staff who have to juggle a lot of things and stop any guests from getting frustrated. I wasn't one of them, but I saw it.

It would be nice not to get the copy-and-paste response from the Hotel to any review, irrespective of it being more than one star. No business is perfect. Isn't...