Cavendish Hotel

We stayed here for our anniversary for two nights, dining in the garden room on one of them. We had a brilliant experiments both with our stay and meal. Expensive, yes, but as a treat it was a lovely experience to be based so closed to Chatsworth (which was a lovely 30 minute walk away) and have great rooms and delicious food.

Apart from lunch in the Orangery, we’ve not been to the Cavendish Hotel for a long time, in fact it was Valentine's 2012, we were the only customers! Since then the establishment has taken on a new lease of life to the point it is currently The Times “hotel of the year”, so we decided to revisit, and here we are for dinner. We arrive early to sit out on the patio for a glass of house champagne, enjoying the view and crisp bubbles. The menus arrive and make our choices for three courses that are variable, the other three are set in this six-course tasting menu. Once seated, bread and other things take nearly 30 minutes to arrive, but the pace improves after that. Each course is exquisitely presented and tastes fabulous, without exception. Poached cod on a wonderful cream sauce; tomato tartare with rich basil granita; trout expertly sous-vide; beef - tasting more like rib-eye than fillet - with a medley of onions had an incredibly rich trio of sauces. Pre-desert was a sharp explosion of tastes, grapefruit, basil and lycee, finally either mille-feuille or chocolate marquise, the latter a complex and delightful end to our dinner. We loved the matched wines, very well paired with each course, the beautiful presentation of each course, the acompanying sauces each a gourmet experience themsleves. We felt the service was not quite there, and why oh why should we have to set our own cutlery? (Towards the end of the dinner there was a complete staff change and it is set for the last course.) With the matched wines it is £129 a head, quite modest compared to some places, and certainly worth every penny.

We went in for breakfast and it took almost an hour to even get the cold breakfast that was served. The staff are lovely, but this place is clearly run poorly. The seat was filthy and, in fact, the entire place looked as though it hadn’t been cleaned properly in months. We also had the pleasure of waiting through a fire alarm drill during our breakfast- this would have been fine had we not known that our breakfast was ready prior to this drill and they left it to sit and get cold while they did the drill. I would not recommend going to visit there in any capacity.