Cromptons Restaurant

I don’t like to gush too much, but the Britannia Adelphi Hotel is magnificent. I mean, just look at it. The thing is stunning. And just the perfect setting for a French Restaurant.
Or so you’d think. According to Trip Advisor, the Adelphi is well past its prime. It might look pretty on the outside but there ain’t kind reports coming from the inside. And the restaurant doesn’t fare much better. Crompton’s claims to harbour ‘the finest French cuisine in beautiful elegant surroundings’. Well, the beautiful and elegant part works well enough. But like a friend of mine encountered at a bit of a celeb bash when he met Lady Isabella Hervey, good looks without substance equals one thing — a vacuous shell. ‘What do you do?’ he asked her. ‘I live in LA,’ was her response.
Yeesh.
Here is a hotel that has almost a Fawlty Towers reputation. It has been the subject of the BBC fly on the wall documentary ‘Hotel’, where staff yelled, customers whinged, Basil, I mean Brian, was regularly livid and abused his very own group of Manuels… you just wouldn’t want to go there. So when I actually knew I was going to the restaurant as part of a conference, I was almost smirking at the lip. Well, drama is entertaining after all.
Guys… it’s baaad.
Ohh I felt so sorry for the waiter. He was lovely. A thoroughly upstanding fellow, he tried hard. But the place was empty. A French menu with English translations underneath greeted us, and we had options of snails, prawn cocktail, snail cocktail (okay, I made that last one up)… Starters are about £4.50 but they really aren’t good. There’s a lot of blandness here, a lot of under-​ripeness, wilted leaves, bad textures. Anyone having meat was bitterly disappointed at the charred mess they were given and my monkfish… that couldn’t have been monkfish. It takes EFFORT to ruin good monkfish. I felt icky.
Vegetables are soggy. Roast spuds are lumps of coal. Puddings are disastrous. Cheese and biscuits, oh lord, not a delightful selection of soft, yielding, tangy goodness with some stodgy oatcakes and fresh fruit to accompany it but predictable barely French slabs, celery so stale you can’t even bite through it, a pack of Jacob’s ‘For Cheese’ crackers dumped on the top. Kill me now.
I really hate doing this, but please, remember that the waiter was good. He was the only redeeming factor in the whole sorry saga. Unless this restaurant sees some improvement quick sharp, I can’t imagine it reaching the dizzy heights. What a great shame. Sort yourselves out, Adelphi!