Looking for an economical hotel close to dundee city centre I stayed here recently - the rooms are very simply furnished but super clean. The real gem within this hotel is the restaurant - Aubergine. I dined alone so top marks to the staff for taking the time to find me a comfortable table where I could enjoy my meal without feeling awkward amidst the couples and groups around me. I ate lunch and dinner there and they were both delicious - and it was a pleasant surprise to find a dedicated vegetarian menu which offered much more than the ubiquitous penne pasta with tomato sauce with which "veggies" are often palmed off. Fresh ingredients, beautiful presentation - even if you don't stay over come for the food alone! Wonderful.

The Craigtay Hotel is situated over a mile from the City centre in Dundee.
It has a free car park, restaurant and bar. They advertise Wi-Fi in the hotel, but this barely works in the bar, and certainly does not work in room number 3 where I stayed. It is the staff that make this hotel, especially Pam and Christopher.
Pam runs the reception, bar and even serves you the food. Christopher is one of the chefs, and he is really very good and pleasant company.
I did find the meals expensive for what they are, my starter was £5-50 and my main course was £16. The problem with this is the portion size, you can see my photos I took of my meal, my starter had just two scallops, and the steak on the main course was supposed to be 8oz, as you can see, it is thinner than a burger, probably 4oz at best. I did notice some of the other guests driving out to find somewhere to eat in the evening, now I know why. My room was nice and although slightly dated, it was perfectly sufficient and overall I considered my stay there very cheap, excluding the food. I discovered after arriving there, that Dundee is undergoing a huge building project, many of the roads are clogged, and they expect this work to continue for 8 years. Directly outside the hotel is part of Dundee's red light district, and I did notice a few girls standing about, but no pimps visible and no police presence whatsoever which is worrrying. It is best to turn left as you leave the hotel, you will see less girls as you go in the direction of the city centre. It really is well worth walking about to see the old buildings before they are pulled down, the area is very derelict, but the old factory buildings houses are fascinating if you like old buildings.

Richard Kaminski.

I was part of a group of around 20 people who had booked dinner to celebrate a colleague's retirement so we were all looking forward to it being a very special night. We had pre-ordered 3 weeks in advance so we thought things would go very smoothly. Wrong! We sat down at around 7:35pm expecting to be served our starters fairly quickly. This didn't happen. They were served in dribs and drabs, with some people still waiting for their portions after others had long finished. The appearance of the food on the plates was wrong. It looked like somebody had tried the idea of nouvelle cuisine, but hadn't really got the hang of it. My starter was 2 very small scallops on a couple of tasteless risotto with some scraps of fatty bacon balanced on top. Some brown unidentifiable sauce had been dribbled along the edges of the plate. My colleagues and friends didn't fare much better. There was no table service for drinks so we had to go through to the bar and order our own. Before the main course was even served, those of my colleagues who had ordered lamb (3 weeks in advance!) were told that the kitchen had run out. They were offered alternatives but these were poorly cooked and unattractively diplayed on the plates, and served up by a senior waitress who was chewing gum openly while she tried to justify the shortcomings by saying that the chef had had to leave because of an emergency, and that there were only two junior kitchen staff preparing the meals. I waited from 8:15 to 9:55 for my main course of steak. This was stringy, the chips were soggy and very brown, and there was one tomato on the plate with no other vegetables or salad. Three of my colleagues who had ordered the lamb were still waiting at 10:20 for their meals. As some of my colleagues were drinking on empty stomachs - because they had to wait so long for their meals - they were becoming understandably upset and made their complaints known to the gum-chewing waitress who took it personally. When we asked to speak to the duty manager, we were told that there wasn't one. A bit odd for a hotel that would like to make a name for itself. Untrained staff with no support is no way to run a hotel in these days of recession. We were so disgusted that we told them that we wouldn't be paying until we could speak to the manager the following Monday morning. We took 2 sides of A4 filled with our complaints to the manager. After much negotiation, we were given a discount.

Glad I found this hotel, very friendly staff and the food was excellent, nice bar and a great nights sleep. Reasonably priced.
I would'nt normally stay in a 2star hotel, I'll be back here though on my next visit to the area