Thistle Hotel, Cardiff

The Cardiff Thistle Hotel is called the Park Hotel, situated in Park Place central Cardiff, close to the Civic Centre and Cardiff New Theatre.

THE HOTEL
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The four star rated hotel has had big money spent on restoration and offers comfort, quality and style with very high service standards and upto date facilities.

The hotel has 136-bedrooms with en suite facilities, including suites.
...CONTACT DETAILS
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Thistle Cardiff, Park Place
Cardiff CF10 3UD
Reception: Telephone ~ 0870 333 9157


THE OVAL BRASSERIE~ OUR VISIT
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We went to the carvery style restaurant where you could eat all you liked for a rather reasonable price for a four star hotel (about £7.95 per head). The tables were draped with quality white linen and linen ... more

The Cardiff Thistle Hotel is called the Park Hotel, situated in Park Place central Cardiff, close to the Civic Centre and Cardiff New Theatre.

THE HOTEL
~~~~~~~~~

The four star rated hotel has had big money spent on restoration and offers comfort, quality and style with very high service standards and upto date facilities.

The hotel has 136-bedrooms with en suite facilities, including suites.

There is a choice of 3 bars~ Sports Bar, Victorian Pub and Lounge Bar.

This hotel is well equipped with large banquetting rooms for up to 300 covers.
They also cater for smaller functions.

There are 60 secure car parking spaces at an addition charge of 5GBP per night which is not very many considering the amount of residents and especially during the banquetting season.

There are lifts to all floors and 24 hour room and porter service.

COST
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A standard double/twin room with mini-bar, satellite TV and tea and coffee making facilites will cost you about £85-£144 for two persons for one night.

An executive superior double/twin room with mini-bar, satellite TV, modem, air conditioning costs about
£96-£153 for two persons for one night.

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Overall a classy, four star rated hotel.
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CONTACT DETAILS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thistle Cardiff, Park Place
Cardiff CF10 3UD
Reception: Telephone ~ 0870 333 9157

THE OVAL BRASSERIE~ OUR VISIT
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We went to the carvery style restaurant where you could eat all you liked for a rather reasonable price for a four star hotel (about £7.95 per head). The tables were draped with quality white linen and linen napkins.

Although the restaurant was very basic it was stylish and modern for such an old Victorian building. Seating is spacious and tables are well spaced out.

We ordered some drinks and were told where to sit and to go to the carvery as soon as we were ready.

We asked the 'chef' what joint of beef it was and he said "oh I don't know, I only started work twenty minutes ago."

Would the time that he started work make any difference to the cut of meat that he was carving?

I could see myself, that disguised behind that alien like yellow fat there was an extremely bad cut of rib of beef.
I know that you need fat on beef for flavour but you also need beef on fat for edibility.

Unfortunately there was no other choice available at that time, so all five of us 'chose' the beef.

We were given a rather large Yorkshire pudding each.

My son burned the ends of his fingers on the pot lid as he lifted it to get roasties not realising that there was a cloth for this purpose that had been removed from the top of the pan.

All the veg was fresh as expected, we served ourselves with these too. Our plates were full and we asked for some gravy, the 'chef' served the gravy giving us only a small portion, so we asked for a bit extra which he gave us all gladly.

THE VERDICT
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The roast potatoes might have been delicious earlier on in the day, but unfortunately these were just emptyish crisp coatings by this time.

Stringy mange tout, mashy broccoli, hard carrots werent worth a mention.

The actual beef was irretrievable from within the fat.

The Yorkshire pudding was about the best thing on the plate, but the gravy was so rich and coagulated that we couldn't eat anymore.

THE GOOD NEWS
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The waiter on hearing our complaints didn't hesitate in giving us a full refund on the food. We paid for all of our drinks and left.

CAR PARKING
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Charged at £5 per night for residents, but you can park here and ask reception for a free token to get out if you use the restaurant and don't require an overnight stay. 

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