Pad by Larkin Cen — Restaurant in Newport

The food was great but there were several issues regarding the service.

The staff do not seem to know the drinks menu. For example, the Nojito mocktail offered a choice of apple juice or Captain Morgan's 0% alcohol rum. My partner requested this with the latter option. The staff later served the cocktail with a shot of the rum in a separate glass.

We felt ignored and constantly had to wait to get attention from our waitress Lexi. When clearing the table after our mains, she did not ask whether we would like any dessert. So we spent about 20 minutes trying to get her attention for us to then ask.

The bill did not include the 20% discount featured on the date we had booked, never mind the fact they had charged us for the additional rum that we never requested (as above concerning the mocktail).

Regarding the discount above, I had originally sent a message to Celtic Manor on their general contact form (since the restaurant does not have an email/phone number listed on their site) and I never once received a response. Quite honestly I find this extremely bad customer service.

To conclude, with all the above issues we experienced, we were not at all happy that we were asked to pay service charge when the standards were below expectations for a supposedly reputable...

We had a delightful evening at the PAD restaurant, enjoying the Monkey King menu by Larkin Cen.

The restaurant had a lovely relaxed ambience and was very clean and well presented. The menu was fantastic, it was difficult to choose what to order as it was all so tempting. We decided to go for the taster menu to get a great selection and it did not disappoint! We also added a couple of bao buns as we couldn’t resist. We enjoyed every dish - particular favourites were the prawn toast (such a delightful mouthful!) The lamb cutlets were cooked to perfection, and the beef Rendang was the best I’ve ever had. The pork belly melted in your mouth and I’ve never had tofu as silky as this. Not to mention the custard bun - what a wonderfully rich, sweet vanilla custard! To top it off the service from Ming was wonderful, she really cared about our dining experience and made sure everything was to our liking. To top it all off, we had the pleasure of talking to Larkin which was lovely. He is such a talented, yet humble chef! We highly recommended it and would...

I recently dined at this restaurant on Wednesday evening while staying at the 5-star resort. Having heard good things and with high expectations, I decided to book a table and give it a try, as I love Asian cuisine.

I started with the bao buns and spring rolls. The bao buns were okay, but definitely not up to the high standard I was expecting. As for the spring rolls, they were quite bland, with no flavor to speak of. I tried dipping them in the sweet and sour sauce, but it tasted more like ketchup than anything else.

In addition, the service wasn’t as comfortable as I’d hoped. The waitstaff were constantly in front of our table, which made the whole experience feel a bit uncomfortable.

Having traveled to many places and experienced authentic Asian food, I was really hoping for a better experience. Sadly, this visit left me disappointed. Hopefully, the restaurant can improve on the flavors and...