Royal County Hotel, Old Elvet, Durham (From Durham Times)

Royal County Hotel, Old Elvet, Durham

11:09am Wednesday 23rd December 2009

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County not up to the Royal standard.

FOR many years, Durham’s Royal County Hotel was the hotel in the city centre. It was posh, comfortable, traditional and quite expensive.

Today, it is still reputed to be among the best (four stars), but there’s a lot more competition, most notably from the Radisson Blu. Now part of the global Marriott chain, it has been extensively extended and refurbished. The result is posh-ish, comfortable, traditional in parts and very expensive.

Sunday lunch just before Christmas was a festive affair, complete with party hats, crackers and waitresses in Santa bonnets. Unfortunately, that was about as far as the ho, ho, ho went.

Sylvia thought the best thing about the meal was the prize in her cracker – a dinky little fan. I was a little more enthusiastic, but not much.

We will deal with the good points first. The County Restaurant is the hotel’s formal dining room and it is not unpleasant in a middle-ofthe road, global-hotel-chain sort of way. The tables are well spaced out, the chairs comfortable and the glassware and napery of good quality (although Sylvia did spot some un-ironed underclothes).

But, as we walked to our table, the electric oil-filled radiator caught the eye. True, it was a perishing cold day, but it didn’t bode well.

There appeared to be no maitre’d present and our principal waitress did nothing to suggest things were going to warm up. I’m sure she’s a lovely lady, but there was little about her demeanour which suggested she was pleased to be serving us. She was matter-of-fact to the point of indifference and served us in a style more suited to dishing out pie and peas at a workingmen’s club instead of the main dining room of a city centre fourstar hotel.

It was ten minutes before we were asked if we would like a drink and another five before our order was taken. We asked for a jug of iced water and then had to ask again for glasses to drink it. We had to ask for salt and pepper as there appeared to be none on any of the tables. The butter for the bread rolls arrived rock hard straight from the fridge and was impossible to spread.

From the “Festive Fayre”

menu (£16.95 for three courses plus coffee and mints – and that was another sore point which we will return to later), Sylvia chose an utterly unremarkable chicken liver pate which came with two tiny slivers of ciabatta toast and an “orange salad” – three segments of orange and a couple of sprigs of lettuce.

Her roast turkey breast came from a turkey roll. There was sage stuffing, a lonely chipolata roll, but none of the advertised cranberry sauce. The vegetables consisted of some tired roasted carrots and parsnips with rosti potato. No green vegetables. Hardly festive.

My curried parsnip soup wasn’t bad. Lightly spiced and well seasoned, it was hot and a good texture. The game casserole that followed was humdrum. Tenderish venison featured, along with mushrooms and a rich gravy, but it made little impression.

The puff pastry lid shattered into zillions of pieces on contact with cutlery and just dissolved soggily into the gravy.

Dispirited, Sylvia didn’t fancy any of the dessert options (lemon tart, Christmas pudding cheesecake, profiteroles and cheese) opting for some plain vanilla ice cream which she pronounced excellent.

I tried the cheesecake which was vaguely boozey, but did not taste much of Christmas pudding. The presence of a sprig of holly sticking out of the top was undeniably pretty, as was the dollop of cranberry sauce which had been missing from Sylvia’s turkey.

Coffee was hot and of decent strength. Sylvia’s latte was OK too except for the cocoa powder sprinkled on top. This might seem picky (and we were in a very picky mood by now) but is, I am assured, an absolute no-no for latte aficianados.

The mints promised on the menu never appeared and neither did the mince pies that other diners were offered. We could have asked, but… Our bill of £47 included two glasses of very good crisp Sicilian house white. It struck us as a lot for a decent bowl of soup, some good quality ice cream and the remaining dross. We settled up to see the waitresses finish their shift bang on 3pm and march out of the dining room.

The depressing thing about it all was that they probably felt they had provided acceptable service. Unfortunately for the Royal County, people – not just picky restaurant reviewers – expect better these days.

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