Duke Of Wellington Hotel — Restaurant in Wales

When taking our food we were told half of the menu wasn't available. Not ideal but I don't mind changing my mind so we ordered Calamari & a bruschetta to start: My calamari was alright, can't really go wrong with it it's just fried squid, but my partner's bruschetta was just completely anaemic, the bread had hardly been toasted/grilled at all, it just looked like a slice of white bread, with the most crazy amount of pesto spread on top. We love pesto as much as the next person but nobody needs about two tablespoons of pesto spread on untested white bread. That is not bruschetta. On the menu the tomatoes were described as "marinated", with what I do not know as they just looked and tasted very much like shop bought cherry tomatoes cut in half.

The mains: x2 Homemade kebabs, chicken&chorizo for me, halloumi and pepper for my partner. My partner's halloumi was completely dried out, rock hard, and cold. Which is strange considering it wasn't burnt to a crisp. This can only mean it's not that it was cooked for too long, but that it had been dried out and left to sit there before service.

Both of our flatbreads were cold and hadn't looked to have been cooked in anyway. Like the bread for the bruschetta above: anaemic.

The seasoned skinny fries tasted nice but I'm not sure either one of us had a fry longer in length than 3cm. It looked like the scraps had just been served to us. Tasty, nonetheless.

I myself hate onions, both in cooked form and raw. I ordered the kebab thinking there would be no onions on it considering, you know, it's not listed on the menu with all the things included on the kebab. The kebab arrived with 3 (three) different types of onions: grilled red, grilled white, raw red diced. Had there only been the grilled onion on the skewer I could've just picked them off and all would've been fine. Due to the raw red onion scattered all over the kebab it was rendered inedible for myself due to the raw onion liquid&smell having permeated the entire kebab. Even my partner, who is a fan of onions, commented on how there was no need to have three different types of onion in the dish. I fear this is turning into a rant against onions at this point so I'll end the mains review with this: Please list onions as an element of the dish on the menu so that onions lovers&haters alike can be fully informed on what they're about to spend £15 on.

Side: Probably the low point of the meal. We shared a cheesy garlic bread. Visually it actually looked quite appealing. The taste & smell however confirmed to me the one major sin of shambolic garlic bread: the garlic was raw. This was unfortunately inedible.

I'm not sure who's at fault as in the food industry it could be any number of things:

Underpaid chef Overworked chef Undertrained chef An owner skimping on cheap ingredients who knows?

Despite all this: it is a lovely venue it must be said. The interior is nice and the beer garden I can imagine is stunning on a warm day. The bones are definitely there for a lovely eating experience, it's just a bit disheartening when you spend north of £50 on genuinely terrible food when anyone can buy their own ingredients and cook a better meal at home with nothing more than a YouTube how-to video. It's hard for people to support local businesses and eat out when that's the experience...

We took our family out for Sunday lunch and as we hadn’t been before we decided we would try it…. And I have to say we will not be returning. Our 2 grandchildren had meals from the kids menu and is adults had the set Easter Sunday menu. Ordered our starters and asked for the little ones food to come out same time..starters were lovely and the one child’s meal (chicken nuggets and chips) was also great however, fish fingers and chips for the other child was not. Chips ok but the batter on the fish fingers was so dark and rock solid. There was no way she could even eat them (she is 4). On raising this to the attention of staff they were quick to cook another portion. . The waiter (colourful shirt & trainers) brought the new lot out by which time the chips from the first plate were cold . He said and I quote ‘it’s the oil hit these are done they are not overcooked’. They were darker and more rock hard than the first lot. How on earth he had the cheek to even bring it out of the kitchen beats me. He knew that he should never of let it leave the kitchen. Thanks to the common sense of the waitress who took the price of the meal off our bill and agreed and apologised for the fact that it was over done in oil I might add that was too hot and not fresh fresh. We ordered them 2 ice creams in a bowl to be served with our mains. Mains came… flat and so dry and overly crispy, beef which we 2 of us had… very dry and hard to chew…veg… one carrot baton and 1 parsnip baton, handful peas and surprisingly mange tout… the latter is a new one on me with Sunday lunch. Then said waiter brought my grandchildren their bowls of ice cream… he just in a nutshell pushes it in front of them… how dare he. Another waitress came over and was so sweet and she said let me take them and put some choc sauce on them and get them a wafer. I have to say it was so disappointing… every 2 mins I had to call one of them (and was so embarrassed that I had to keep doing that)…waited a while to have our drinks order.. I had to ask in the end for some service…needed another placement (we were a booking of 5 but only 4 laid up.. more napkins, asked for horseradish sauce with roasts… had to ask for that to be brought out, were told that little ones could have colouring and crayons to keep occupied… had to chase that. I get that they may have had a really busy day… mistakes happen… but whoever cooked our food needs to be given some more training or be shadowed because their standards seriously have slid. The male waiter need customer service training as his certainly was amiss today. I have had training with Marston’s in kitchen, restaurant and bar. I will not...

📌 Wayne's Eats - Local Food Blogger for South Wales (Instagram/Facebook Review)

This is my first negative review on this page...and hopefully my last!

📍@cowbridge_thedukeofwellington

The reality is, not all restaurant visits are amazing. I've always been of the belief that if it's good I'll post it and if it's not, I'll send the restaurant a private DM with feedback. As I do not enjoy writing negative reviews 👎

This restaurant visit was so bad that I just had to post this, as I would never want anyone else to have the experience we had.

📌 I will start of with the basic stuff... We went as a family of 4 and ordered a Burger, Lasagne, Steak & Ale Pie and a Buttermilk Hunters Chicken.

Now bare in mind, this was not a blogger visit. I was going to take photos but the food arrived and it looked awful so I didn't bother and we just started eating anyway.

I was not expecting fine dining (it's a pub) but I was expecting basic pub grub, it was bad. The burger was tiny (smaller than a McDonald's) the lasagne was burnt, the beef was chewy in the pie and my buttermilk chicken was non existent.

Anyways... I kindly and politely told the waitress that I ordered the (upgraded) buttermilk chicken. The waitress checked and said that it was buttermilk chicken, I questioned it and showed her there was no batter or crumb on it and she said let me get the chef to explain...

👉 This is where the issue began, the chef came out and tells me that's how they make it and that I personally did not read or understand the menu, starts shouting and being very aggressive standing over us in an intimidating manner and saying that we can't read and that if we don't like it, to get out of his restaurant and he stormed off.

I am trying to condense this but the chef was doing this in front of the whole restaurant, extremely unprofessional. Honestly never had an experience quite like it.

Our waitress was really embarrassed by what happened and did apologise on his behalf, now our bill for the table was waived because of what happened but the point is, this never should have happened, and it caused a lot of unnecessary upset.

To conclude this is basically an overpriced Wetherspoons but Wetherspoons actually does better food and for a fraction...