Haddon House Hotel

The food and service were fantastic at our family Christmas gathering today. For our table of four adults and two children, the small serving of vegetables and cranberry sauce wasn’t quite enough, so we asked for more. They brought out another piping hot dish of vegetables and another pot of cranberry. There were 23 of us in the party. I’d highly recommend going, and my wife and I are already planning a date night here in a couple of weeks.

The hotel is ideally placed, about a five-minute walk from west bay harbour and other amenities. We had a lovely weekend at the Haddon house hotel. Our room was clean and comfortable, with a spacious bathroom, and every staff member was amazing and eager to help. Just perfect.

The service was generally fine and the food was lovely, but paying turned into a whole drama over splitting the group bill. We’d been told it could be divided by the number of people. I only wanted to pay for my own items and offered to work it out from a menu, but they said they no longer had menus and had to print one. One woman even had to get her dad to sort it out. A balding, rather rude man then said we should have asked for separate bills when ordering and asked why we hadn’t. When an older man in our group said we’d forgotten, he replied sarcastically, “of course you did,” then huffed, rolled his eyes, and slammed the bill down on the bar. He also picked up another bill and snapped “take this” at a staff member while she was pouring a pint. I eat out with large groups in all sorts of places quite often, and splitting a bill has never caused anything like this. It would have been easy to sort out.

Breakfast was delicious, served in the restaurant’s elegant setting, and we’d love to return. The hotel is close to the bay and beach, with welcoming, attentive staff and a spacious, clean room. The décor has a quirky charm and an old-fashioned comfort to it, the sort of place where you can picture sitting by the fireplace with a drink and your dog. The mattress was a little too soft for us, but that didn’t change our rating. We’d warmly recommend it.