The Swan — Restaurant in Maldon

Beautiful venue and a promising menu, with mostly polite staff. However there were some niggles on my visit that brought it down.

Both food and drinks menus are interesting with decent crowd-pleasing choices. The margarita was great, powerful and punchy. Other cocktails were bland. Starters were very good (hallou, teriyaki salmon). But mains were disappointing. The Swan burger was very greasy and our friend couldn't finish it. The chateaubriand for 2 is a standard in steakhouses, but at £58 this one was poor value for money. Just three slices of meat each, chips left to sweat in metal containers, a few tomatoes and one sad little mushroom did not hit the mark at all.

Desserts are a small selection, but despite that the only one I wanted wasn't available. The lemon and lime mess was unbalanced, with not enough meringue for the curd. The cheesecake was sickly sweet.

On service it was fine, but one did come back from a break reeking of cigarettes which is unpleasant, and we had to ask for tap water three times before it came.

A meal for 4 cost £190 with a few drinks, and I didn't feel it was good value for money. It's good food, but pricing itself as outstanding food and it's not...

Room was nice, sadly customer service was really poor. No staff onsite before 12.00 or after 11.00 pm. No refreshments or snacks, let alone meals are available before mid-day. There are tea/coffee sachets and a kettle in the room. At check-in no information was provided about opening/closing times or check-out. On my day of departure I was quite rudely told by the cleaner I had overstayed my welcome (it was 10.45) and I had to leave my room now! At no point was I told I had to leave the premises, let alone my room by 10.30 am. There was nowhere to wait inside the property for my taxi because it was closed to the public until mid-day so I ended up waiting on the street with my suitcase. One wonders why they are marketing themselves as a hotel when it is a room in a sometimes open...

Me and my partner booked a table for our anniversary and were not disappointed by the food quality or service. We were given complimentary proseco and even desert to share with happy anniversary written on it. They put candles out on the table especially for us and just made the night all that much more special. The staff couldn’t have been more friendly and helpful, they checked on us to make sure everything was going well and congratulated us on our anniversary. The food was superb my partner had the bourbon ribs which practically fell of the bone and I had the ribeye steak medium well which cut like butter. Would highly recommend going there for a nice meal for a couple or for friends and family, just be aware it’s more of an adult atmosphere. We will definitely be...