Catastrophic dinner & superb bed

I had booked a room and dinner package at Hotel GLO Sello for last week’s Friday. The hotel has recently been renovated from floor to ceiling, so it was interesting to see the renewed hotel. The room I had chosen was a GLO Tempur room that is equipped with a Tempur bed as we were interested in testing this state-of-the-art bed. We also tested the Chromecast-streaming system available in the room, which turned out to work well for streaming Netflix from my iPad. I also found the divan in the room super-comfy to lounge on. Before it was time to test the bed, we had a dinner to look forward to.

If the room was a hit, the dinner was anything but. We had a table reservation at the hotel restaurant GLO Grill Kitchen at 8 pm and as we arrived, we noticed two larger groups already seated in the restaurant. Despite this, the restaurant was by no means full. The dinner package included was a three-course menu with two glasses of wine. The menu sounded delicious: starter of Fennel soup and olive chip, main of either Grilled whitefish, shrimp risotto and orange butter sauce or Grilled lamb, herb risotto and port wine sauce and dessert Gingerbread trifle. We both opted for the fish for the main course. We also decided to start off the dinner with an aperitif. The menu came with two glasses of wine, which you could select from the wine menu and for the starter we chose the recommended Chardonnay. While the waiter served us, he said that the food may take a while because there was a rush in the kitchen. This was no problem for us as we were in no hurry and were happy to enjoy the aperitifs without being rushed. But then things started to go pear-shaped.

We were finally served the starter about an hour into our reservation. The server apologized for the wait and said the food should be coming out faster as the biggest rush in the kitchen was letting up. However, this was not the case. Once we had finished our soups, we waited for another hour at which time hubby went to ask the servers when we might expect to be served our mains. The response was that they are just being prepared. This was, however, clearly not the case. It took almost another half an hour before the main course was served. While waiting for the main course a server came to ask which wine we would like with the fish. Then she said that she would recommend white wine, which almost made us burst out in laughter as that is not a wine recommendation in my opinion (we did laugh once she left the table). I noticed she had the wine list in her hand so I said that if I could have a look at the list I could choose, her response was that you have the same list right there on the table. Eventually she managed to recommend a Riesling. When she came back with the bottle, I had to stop her from pouring it in the wine glasses on the table that had already been used to drink another wine. Eventually the mains arrived, and the server said he would ask the kitchen to prepare the desserts right away, he also asked if we would like coffee with the desserts which the restaurant would pay for since we had to wait. As it was 10.45 at night, coffee did not sound like a good idea so I suggested the aperitifs could be comped instead. Once we had finished the mains, we said we would take the dessert up to the room as the restaurant was closing.

Up in the room we polished off the desserts and settled in for the night. The bed was amazing, I slept so well. All in all, I can say that the hotel was nice and awarded a perfect night’s sleep but the service in the restaurant was something I’ve never experienced before. Luckily, the food itself was quite good, otherwise the disappointment would have been huge. I do understand that the restaurant was busy but regardless, a three-course dinner should not take three hours (I’ve eaten six course menus in three hours). Also, the restaurant has been aware of the number of guests before hand as the large parties must have had table reservations as did we. So, I would recommend the hotel and might even return myself at some point, but the restaurant lost any chance of us ever coming back.