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“78 Gleadless Drive ”

written by on 27/06/2010

78 Gleadless Drive

Gleadless Town End

Sheffield

S12 2QN



21st June 2010



Dear Sirs,



Re: Blackpool Grand Metropole - 13th - 15th June 2010



It was our anniversary on the 14th June so my wife booked a weekend break in Blackpool as we wanted goes to the Funny Girls show. My wife has M.E. and she can`t walk very far, so the Grand Metropole hotel looked an ideal location and she booked to go there on a dinner, bed and breakfast basis.

She booked a basic room as we were only there for two nights but requested a Double room with Sea View if possible as it was our Anniversary. So we didn`t necessarily expect a sea view but what we didn`t expect to get was a view of a wall a few feet away from the window! This was room LG13, it also smelled and felt very damp and was so cold you would have thought it was middle of winter; probably as it never had any sun and the heating was not on.

We returned to the front desk and were offered another room 314 but at an extra charge of £10 each we viewed the room and decided to have it as it was much better than the previous one. The lady on reception was very helpful.



With that sorted we went down for dinner, this was approximately 7:15pm we were sent to a table. We sat down to find a dirty knife and fork which I cleaned myself as the staff did not appear very responsive.

However after not been offered a starter, as we discovered the next night soup was served by the waiting staff, we went up to the buffet expecting delicious meal as stated on all the adverts displayed. To my surprise we found dried up roast beef with dried up gravy covering some of it. The other choice was spaghetti meat balls this was spaghetti with tinned savoury meat balls on top of it and frozen fish goujons. It got worse as I got to the vegetables, I found frozen peas and mixed veg, frozen roast potatoes which had been deep fried and were dry and powdery inside, small boiled potatoes with the skins on which had dirt on and had clearly not been washed properly and the gravy was thick and lumpy.

To say the least we didn`t have much to eat. After that we went up for sweet, well surprise surprise all the sweets were, frozen at a guess I would say 'Ministry of Sweets' or cheap and cheerful cakes and packet mix cheesecakes.

The hot sweet was like a plum or Christmas pudding, couldn't really tell by looking and lumpy custard; the only sweet we had was a little chocolate cake and ice cream.

As we left the dinning room the staff did not say goodnight or anything; just couldn't be bothered.

We just put this down to it been Sunday night.

Breakfast should be better we said, you would thing so anyone can cook breakfast, as we went to the buffet the cereals spilled all over and the side food stuffs were all over the floor. The bacon rashers were cooked on top of each other making it impossible to get one full slice.

The sausages were too bready and were deep fried and one shape lighter than black, the baked beans had been watered down, the toast was rock hard on the edges and uncooked in the middle.

Thank god we only booked two days.

Dinner Monday night, day of our anniversary we had a bottle of your wine to go with the so called delicious three course meal. Ha!

We got soup, not a lot but we got it, we went up to the buffet and the so called honey roast ham was sliced processed compressed ham which had not seen a drop of honey that day and the sauce was dried up on top.

Also the same spaghetti meat balls from the night before were on, the fish choice was cod in batter straight out of the freezer, frozen chips, the veg looked ok until I got closer; out of a bag frozen cauliflower and broccoli, the mushy peas were watered down and tasteless..

The sweet was bad as the night.

The only thing that made the dinner bearable was the waiter Mark. However I found the rest of the staff unhelpful and miserable. Breakfast is not worth writing down, to say the least it was the same as the mornings before mostly inedible.



We were just glad to get out.



It is a bad practice to allow your maintenance staff, kitchen and other staff to help them selselves to the buffet whilst there are still guests in the dinning room. It also does not look very nice to have your kitchen staff placing things on the buffet. The only staff to put things on the buffet should be the chefs, sorry cooks you don't have a chef, chefs have pride in there work your cook cannot be bothered.



All in all the stay was a big mistake and we will not be returning to the Grand Metropole.

We have stayed in hotels and bed and breakfast all over the world and the stay at the Grand Metropole is the worst one for food and customer care we have ever come across.



I have worked as executive head chef for years in some of the best international hotels in the world. I have trained waiting staff, house teams and catering managers before.

I still work as an executive head chef and I can't believe that you stay in business with what I noticed in only 2 days.



I would advise you to you to retrain your staff and find yourselves a new head chef or kitchen manger and a general manger with the capability to control and implement standards and deliver quality.



We only paid £70 a night but even for that for that I would at the least expect food that I could eat and enjoy.



Please do not insult us by sending us a voucher for your hotels as you get it back in the next post.

Yours

Mr. David Watkin