Stonemill Restaurant — Restaurant in Wales

What a lovely place on the outskirts of Monmouth. Received a warm welcome, and excellent service from the 4 members of front of house team.

Ordered wines and food. Wine was reasonably priced.

Received a welcome snack of fried halloumi with a salty garlic dip. The amuse Boucher was cauliflower and celeriac soup. This was smooth, flavoyrsome and amazing. Also received foccacia with oil/balsamic dip.

Then came the starter of scallops with lardons and samphire. The lardons had a very strong flavour which overpowered the scallops and samphire. I'm told samphire is salty but couldn't taste it or the scallops.

We both ordered ribeye steak. This came with chips, vine tomatoes and field mushroom. The steak was smothered in chorizo butter which was a strong flavour meaning the beef steak had no flavour. I scraped this off and left it. The steak was ordered medium rare and was just pink in the middle. I would normally have it slightly less done but rib eye is very forgiving.

Dessert was lemon posset. Amazing, lemony and creamy. I loved it. My husband had the popcorn pannacotta. How they got the flavour in there I don't know, but it was enjoyable.

Whilst it was good, it wasn't amazing due to the strong flavours chef used to with the scallops and ribeye. It was unbalanced. It's not me - I eat chillies and Currys so love strong flavours, but in their right place.

£165 Bill included the wine on a...

On the whole, the food was delicious (other than one dessert which had split and had to be returned) but the front of house staff let the side down with a catalogue of errors. They were all very young and it looked like they needed direction by someone with more experience to point them in the right direction! Firstly, when you have champagne you do not serve it in red wine glasses! Next came the waitress trying to take dishes away while we were still eating! We then had two courses where they brought the next course along before clearing the table so we were asked to clear the old dishes ourselves to enable the waitress to put the new plates on the table. The after meal coffee was then served with the desserts and instead of after that course was finished and having the dishes removed and then we were kept waiting 15 minutes for the check after we had asked for it even though there were only 4 tables and 3 waiting staff to cover these. All minor points but when you are at a higher end restaurant you certainly do not expect this catalogue of very...

Visited yesterday for Sunday lunch. The set price was pretty reasonable for the quality and size of portions. Both the belly pork and the beef were excellent. The side vegetables were very well cooked and seasoned. They chose to go with fennel and honey which was a lovely mix and something a bit different from the normal steamed veg you’ll find at other great pub lunches in the area. The cauliflower cheese was one of the best we’ve had in the area! They didn’t skimp on the cheese 😍 The service was very good, staff were attentive and helpful. This was especially impressive and nearly every table was booked, so it was super busy and service wasn’t impacted. Well done 👏🏽 I normally try to add photos but nothing lasted long.

My only suggestion would be to think about the lighting. It was pretty dark upstairs. I’m not really sure how you’d improve it as there didn’t seem much options that wouldn’t clash with the style of...