to find this vegetarian menu option rather uninspiring?

[Melpomene]

Our family are going to stay in a hotel tomorrow night. A relatively smart place, with a spa and a '2AA rosette award winning River Room Restaurant'. The dds and I are vegetarian, so I had a look at the hotel's menu on their website. The options for main course include:

• Line caught skate wing pan fried with capers, lemon, nut brown butter - £17 (sounds nice if you eat fish)

• Roast cornfed chicken breast, sage, onion, bread sauce - £15 (sounds nice if you eat chicken)

• Plate of carrots (vegetarian) - £12.95

To be fair, they do also have a tomato risotto - but on what planet does a 'plate of carrots' count as a main course? And how can you justify charging £12.95 for it?

I think we'll be visiting a restaurant in the town instead.

OP, you better not be planning on eating breakfast in the morning - when they get wind of this thread they will be gobbing in your porridge.

SSP... go and report back here

I'm reassured that if I ever have to host a dinner party at short notice and all I've got in is a bag of carrots that'd be acceptable.

That trip advisor picture is definitely one scallop cut into 3!

Well no response from the Bedford Swan yet. Perhaps they are too busy dashing around serving everyone their famous plates of carrots.

'We at the Bedford Swan Hotel recognise that our younger guests (aged 11
years and under) have very little individual tastes'

True that. My ds does indeed have very little taste. He likes dadrock & Star Wars, & tries to wear sandals with socks.

Well to be fair, it does say Our menu does not necessarily list all ingredients in every dish

So maybe they omitted something important from the description like a big wedge of cheddar.

Do you think the carrots look like this

I don't think the hotel is unreasonable. Their job is to make money and they are offering a vegetarian option that you don't happen to like. Don't get the plate of carrots. Maybe it's a misprint. Pets welcome doesn't usually mean horses.

I've seen some very bad vegetarian options in my time, but this is something else! Can't wait to hear their response.

Wonder when they check their FB. I am looking forward to their reply

They'll be recovering from a busy night's service by now - all that peeling, dicing, julienning. Takes it out of you.

OP again. We've been out all evening and the restaurant had closed by the time we got back to the hotel at 11, so I don't know whether it remained deserted all evening or whether it had lots of carrot-eating customers while we were out. It was certainly deserted at 6pm when I popped in earlier.

If they don't reply to that Facebook message, ill try and ask them about the carrots tomorrow.

I have discovered another corking misprint, in the hotel spa brochure. They offer a 'mum to be baby bump massage', which is described as being 'distressing'. I think (hope) they meant to say 'de-stressing'.

HaHa !

Maybe they are just very strong believers in honesty

To be fair though, with my SPD, I would have found getting on and off a massage table extremely distressing!

at a distressing massage.

I once had a very distressing massage in the grounds of a Thai temple - much standing on my groin was involved IIRC

at distressing pregnancy massages

I know that hotel well. I am very surprised - I would expect them to be able to knock up something better than that. I think the dish must have something else with it.

a stick?

They get 2 circles on Trip Advisor. The local Little Chef gets 4 circles!

They only get two circles because someone probably the manager has given a five star review to combat all the one star ones.

Check out the picture on Tripadvisor someone's uploaded of one scallop cut into three! Judging by that, a plate of carrots may indeed just be a plate of carrots!

I had a 'vegan' option on an Emirates flight once which was raw sliced aubergine. That's it. Nice!