The g Hotel & Spa

Girls trip away for 40th birthday: Pros: hotel decor is lovely and glam, food was tasty and good portions. Wine was nice . Staff were friendly but not enough of them- see below . Breakfast service and food was really good. Bathroom in room was fab with strong rain shower and lots of toiletries. Cons: Service for afternoon tea and dinner wasn’t great . Too little staff and seemed no one was over seeing operations so staff appeared a little chaotic trying to manage all the tables . Had booked afternoon tea well in advance with twice via telephone calls confirming coeliac options would be available. Our reservation was at 2pm but the two coeliacs didn’t get any food till after 3pm after the staff twice bringing out gluten options that had to be returned . At dinner , not enough staff and while the server was friendly she was also seating people so no one checking if we needed anything and took a long time to get basics like butter and water etc after asking multiple times . Hairdryer in room was faulty and the room lights weren’t all working. All in all: nice stay but for the high price of accommodation and food would have expected more staff and more attentive to details.

7) breakfast on the morning of new years day was chaotic. The staff had no knowledge of anything, they were genuinely running around like headless chickens. I'm coeliac and asked one waitress about gluten free options, i was told "we can do gluten free bread and stuff" which wasn't very assuring. You're gone a two tiered tray of pastries, breads, fruits and yogurt/ granola for the table which is nice. I asked our waiter if it was possible to get this in a GF friendly option, was told they had GF granola so was delighted with that. Again, the waiter was nowhere to be seen about 15 mins later so I asked another waitress. She then replied saying "oh that is gluten free" i proceeded to tell her that no it wasn't the oats aren't GF and she said oh right I'll go check. Another while later our waiter came back and said they didn't have gf granola jist the yogurt and compote (which would have been perfect if they said that from the beginning). I got eggs Benedict, poached eggs were overdone and the yolk was hard (never sent back because that probably would have taken another hour) and my partner got scrambled eggs (portion was so small it wouldn't have been enough to feed a small toddler let alone an adult man). Other small details: there is no nice coffee options that you'd get in a normal 5 star hotel, just your basic coffee pot; the orange juice isn't freshly squeezed as you'd expect from a 5 star, just your regular cartoned OJ and when you ask for a refill of your juice, the waiter said "no problem can i use the same glass" and he took back our glasses to refill them. Again, that's a small detail that doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things but it's the collection of these small details that typically add to the experience of a 5 star hotel. 8) The spa was nice enough but quite small, you also have to pay an additional €10pp to use the facilities which is just wild when you consider how much the stay costs vs what you get for it. As a result, we only went once during our 2 night stay as to use the spa facilities each day, it would have cost us €60 in total. 9) We had dinner in the restaurant in the hotel the second night and didn't have high expectations. In fairness, the steak was nice but again, the entire dining experience was a far cry from a 5 star experience. I was very clear from the start that i was coeliac and couldn't have anything gluten or cooked in the same oil. We got the chateaubriand steak to share with a side of parsnips and potatoes. All of which didn't have gluten marked as an allergen (but I asked to be sure). The parsnips had what looked like deepfried crispy onions on top and before I went to eat i decided to triple triple check to see if it was gluten free and thankfully i asked because those crispy bits were not! Really irresponsible from them. When we received our spoons for dessert, one spoon was freshly used (spoon had leftover food and what looked like saliva on it) and the other spoon had dried in food. It was honestly laughable I couldn't even hold a serious face when saying it to the waiter. What shocked us more was the fact he said absolutely nothing, no apology, nothing, just took the spoons, walked off, brought back fresh ones and said nothing! Shocking! 10) Lastly, what i thought was funny upon checkout, nobody asked us how our stay was. However what was nice was they gave us a bottle of water each for the road. (Part 2)