My Husband surprised me with reservations to the Ivy hotel for a valentines meal on Monday. It has always been a little family tradition of ours since we met to go there as we live in the village it is an easy walk.
So we arrive for our three course meal with Champagne on arrival with high expectations which were soon to be scuppered. There was no Champagne even though everyone else seemed to get a glass ours never came. When we were taken to our table there was only one chair so my husband stood for a minute.
We ordered the food and although the menu looked good the food was not. We both had the Cream of celeriac Soup and really this was just water that was Celeriac Coloured. There was no seasoning and not really any celeriac flavour it did not even taste like a bowl of cream it was rubbish.
Next i had the Mozzarella and Tomato tart, also rubbish. It was not cooked, overloaded with Mozzarella and had simply the finest tomatoes Tesco had on offer that day on it no a sun dried or vine ripened to be seen, it was cold and not even a little browned. It was stogy and tasteless so i left it as i thought there was no point eating it. My husband said his lamb was ok but a little bland. I did mention to the waitress that the tart was not nice and she said she would tell the chef but that was the end of it.
Dessert was good but you cant really mess up a cheese board and once they had taken that away we sat. The menu included coffee although it looked like that was never going to be offered so after 10 minutes we finally asked for that. We had the bill as well and left.
I have lived in the village all my life and i even worked at the Hotel when i was much younger and at School and this was by far the worst meal i have had out of many. Whatever they have done it is not good.
I put on a brave face so my Husband was not disappointed as he had made the effort to book a table as a surprise but it did ruin my valentines dinner
So to the Ivy Hotel i would say must do better next time although i think if we visit again ill have a drink and get a bag of chips from the chippy on the way home.

...Was not sure what i was going to find when i got here as i booked it over the internet, but i was pleasantly surprised. The staff were could have been i little more alert but generally lovely!!

The room was big, clean and comfortable. Dinner in the restaurant was nice and breakfast extra yummy according t o the other half who had the full english...

Definately recommend it!

I booked on the day, at very short notice, and was given a lovely big room with a king size bed. I ordered room service and all 3 courses were lovely to eat and well presented. My only critisism would be the TV was old and buzzed for a while when first turned on and the hairdryer didn't work. But overall i had a lovely stay and look forward to my next visit.

We arrived just before 1pm, they had no record of our booking upon arrival, we did luckily get the last room in the house though but they were unable to provide us lunch as the chef didn't want to cook because they were getting ready for a function, not a great first impression. The room really wasn't anything like the pictures just an old room with a few new cushions on the bed.....certainly not the standard I would expect for £90 anyway. When it came to sleeping my wife and I ended up in that comedy roll together situation in the middle of the bed and if you dare move the bed sounded like it was ready to collapse! So after a rubbish nights sleep we got up and I was first to have a shower.......a cold shower......a cold shower under a shower that I really wouldn't want to call a shower, more like standing under a leaky tap.....so after my invigorating cold shower I felt great....well more angry than great but anyway it was my wife's turn....she however established that if you were to use the bath attachment you could actually get hot water.....yes I did feel a little stupid but why have a shower there when it doesn't work? Then came the issue of towels....there was only one so we had to share!
On to the good stuff, breakfast was really good, no it actually was really very good.
Back to the bad stuff....we went to pay and not being one to keep things to myself I mentioned my bad experience in the hope they would understand but there was more talk of how they had actually managed to find my booking and what a terrible mistake....turns out they don't listen and cant spell but had they have tried a few more creative search terms when trying to find the booking in the first place then I'm sure they would have found it in the beginning! However after a few long silences I was reluctantly offered to have my bar bill removed.....hmmmmm.... £8 was the total of my bar bill.....I really don't think is fair compensation for my awful experience but they clearly thought this was good......

We will not go back, it looks great in the pictures and its not all bad, the bar area is pretty nice but get past all that and it is awful!!

And then as the final parting gesture I left something in my room......everyone knows deep down it was on eBay not more than an hour after you left the room but I thought it was worth a call just incase.....only it turns into 6 calls as no-one ever called back when they said they would!