The Merchant Hotel, Belfast, Alan Quigley

Have dined in the Great Room on numerous occasions but was very disappointed by my visit at the weekend & feel I must leave a review. I never left a review a few months ago when my partner who is vegan was given a dish at a wedding and the staff member came & told him they had mixed it up & he had eaten dairy. (I felt I’d let that slide as the staff member made an unfortunate mistake & I thought I would give the merchant another chance). But unfortunately standards have slipped overall. We started with vegetarian afternoon tea. The Indian theme was rather disappointing. Curry flavoured egg sandwiches on dry bread with mango chutney on the side didn’t compliment tea & cakes very well at all. The chocolate cake was dry & by that point we were just put off and didn’t even try the other desserts so can’t comment on those. We ordered Prosecco - it was poured at the table from a bottle that had already been opened & mostly drank from - this didn’t feel very special at all. Nothing was cleared away when we were done & when we asked for the bill, we were told that it would come to the table. We waited & no one came back so we ended up leaving the table with everything still on it & going up to pay. After paying £113 for this experience we tried to cheer ourselves up & went to the cocktail bar - the cocktail menu has been reduced greatly in recent years & the prices have almost doubled. This used to be my favourite spot in the city but £20 for a glass which is mostly a block of ice simply isn’t worth it. All in all very disappointing.