My wife received an incredible offer from Travelzoo, $200 for two nights with a wine sampling and $50 restaurant credit, and decided to spend two of five nights in Mendocino at the Mendocino Hotel. Our plan was to spend some time in their bar, have some cocktails and try out their menus. After our first afternoon and evening there we called our second destination and made arrangements to go there a day early.

Our initial reception at the front desk was lukewarm, unlike our entry into our garden room, which was downright cold and dank. The thermostat was pegged at 50 degrees and it took a good hour for the room to get to habitable warmth. Wouldn’t you at least turn the heat on for a guest with a pre-paid reservation?

We went to the bar for cocktails before dinner and the bartender, an older gentleman, was borderline surly. We wanted martinis and asked about call gins. He said they were at the other end of the bar. With prodding, he finally rattled off a list of premium gins. In the meantime, my wife made a reservation for dinner in the dining room for 6:00 p.m.

At 6:25, with only one table seated in the dining room, my wife went to inquire of the hostess if we could be seated. She told us to choose any table. We ordered the “Mendocino Mushroom Soup”, their specialty, and the giant scallops. The soup, $12.00, was full of minced mushrooms which tasted like store-bought Crimini and white mushrooms in a weak broth and served in a small “pot” that you might get onion soup au graten served in.

The scallops, ostensibly served on a bed of pureed cauliflower and a couple of other vegetables was incredibly bland. We asked the server to take some of the “cauliflower” back to the kitchen and ask if that was how it was supposed to taste. (It tasted like weak roux…without the flavor.) To her credit, the waitress came back and said “Even the chef agreed that it was bad. Can I bring you some desserts to make up for it?” We tried the crème brulee which was over cooked and the top over done.

We retired to our room and looked at each other and said “let’s cut our losses and see if we can check in to our next place a day early." The next morning we had a decent breakfast at the café and stopped by the front desk to let the clerk know that we would be checking out shortly and to please prepare our bill. She informed us that check out time was in 15 minutes and I said we were prepaid through the next day and would be back in awhile. (We didn’t expect a refund.) She didn’t inquire at that time, or 45 minutes later when we checked out, why we were leaving early.

We'd planned to "hunker in" and spend a lot of time enjoying the hotel and its amenities. We were prepared for an old hotel and its quirks, but we weren’t expecting such an utter lack of hospitality. Mediocre check in, cold room, surly bartender and bad, over-priced food, followed up with indifference for prepaid guests checking out a day early.

Beware!