Just returned from the Jaz Mirabel Beach complex in the early hours of this morning and thank God we are home. Its all superficial is all i can say, it looks superb and it is very clean and tidy but OMG the food is nothing short of appalling. We booked through Portland Direct and paid in excess of £1500 for the two of us for one week All Inclusive. This was a big mistake we should have booked to return to the Maldives where we had been in March of this year. Now that is exclusivity and nearly the same price.
Prior to leaving a work colleague had visited this hotel two weeks before we were due to go, his reports weren't filling me with confidence before we left. Apart from the coach driver at the airport virtually demanding a tip before putting the cases into the mini bus this was probably the only time we got hassled for tipping. Saying that, i didn't feel safe & secure enough to leave the hotel grounds for the week of our stay. Reports from other hotel guests weren't helping either as we were told of bags and wallets etc going missing on trips into the local areas.

The holiday was supposed to be All Inclusive, this is not the case. There are 5 rest two of them are included in your package. The other three are Italian, Asian & Lebanese themed. I never used any of these as we were getting mixed reviews from other guests and due to the fact that the cost was £60 per couple per night for a 3 course meal to use them. This isn't what I class as all inclusive. So we stuck to the canteens (that's all they were) that were included. One of which wouldn't allow men in with shorts on, although the women walked around with very little on indeed, double standards? The choice of food was atrocious, we were advised not to eat anything that wasn't fully cooked (why would there be anything?) so i kept away from the salads for obvious reasons. The bread was very stale and dry and no-one seemed to use the cloth to hold the bread to cut it. I stayed away from the soup as we were warned to avoid any water that wasn't bottled and couldn't guarantee where this had come from. So this left the hot food selection. Each and every night of our stay consisted of the following Claggy white rice in a warming tray, 1 beef dish (one night it was in a creamy white leak sauce that looked disgusting), saut ed vegetables, 1 chicken dish (this had melted cheese on one occasion), mashed potato that you could have drunk through a straw, and 1 fish dish. There were two Chefs!? cooking food along the rear wall of the restaurant (sorry, Canteen!) and this sometimes consisted of deep fried small fish bites in batter or the vegetarian option of pasta with a bland tomato sauce.

The breakfast was about the only edible meal we could eat, the usual array of cereals was on offer but the integrity of the milk was just too much of a put off. So my Wife had toast and juice while i had two freshly cooked eggs with beans and some small sausages. The eggs were superb and the guy that cooked them was the nicest genuine person I spoke to all week, thanks. The pastries that were available were just recycled from the night before although the croissants from time to time were edible. The coffee/tea situation was nothing more than comical. The waiters are constantly walking around wanting to top up your cup at every possible moment. The only problem being there isn't enough cups to go around, this is at a time when the canteen was only a quarter full. On more than one occasion I visited the coffee/tea station to find no cups, no sugar or no spoons. I was stirring my coffee with the handle of a desert spoon most of the holiday.

The lunchtime menu was just as inviting to the point where we stopped going and started using the poolside snack bars, if it weren't for the margherita pizza's on offer i'm sure my Wife would have starved.

I know i'm painting a desperately disappointing picture here but this is the worse parts of our holiday, the hotel infrastructure and cleanliness is superb but this lets itself down far too easily. I believe there are three things that need to be right to have a fantastic time and they are good hotel room etc, good weather & good food and we missed out on one of those three.

Some people will be reading this thinking "What a Victor Meldrew" etc but in a previous life i spent 5 days a week driving a car transporter around England, Scotland & Wales eating in some of the best & the worse cafes this country has to offer and i can honestly say that if this were a cafe I would never call again.

To top off the final day of our week we elected to pay to keep the room longer until our coach arrived for the transfer back to the airport, we enquired at reception as to how much this would be and was told £71 for the 6 hours we needed it, we reluctantly paid this so as we had a toilet and showers available when we needed them. Believe me after eating here all week you won't want to be too far from the toilets. The hotel decided to turn off our room cards after we should have originally booked out so I walked the distance back to the reception to get them turned on again. This took some explaining as my receipt for the room was in the safe in the room I couldn't get into! Cards now reactivated I walked the long distance back to the room only to find that they didn't work, so back again i went. Cards reactivated AGAIN I went back to find the cleaner in out room cleaning it out ready for the next guests, I tried my best to explain that we had paid to keep the room until 6pm but this wasn't working. So for the next 15 minutes we shared our room with the cleaner.

We definitely aren't snobs and normally go with the flow of what life throws at us but this is no 5 star hotel, we stayed in the Maldives at Hudhuranfushi which is only supposed to be 3 star, i think, and it blew the socks off this place.

So all i can say is from my experience do yourself a favour and book somewhere else, and if it were me that wouldn't be Egypt.