Looking for somewhere for a Friday lunch to welcome in the weekend, J and I decided to eshew our usual burbs locales and go into Gotham aka Cardiff city centre.

Number of good lunch (more formal than the market) options in the City centre, such as Asador 44, Bar 44, Curado and Casanova, but we decided on somewhere that neither of us had been to before in the form of the Sorting Room in the Parkgate Hotel.

To be honest I have heard very few reports in terms of this place, bar from the Tyre Guy guide saying the following:

“Set within an impressive, modish hotel this elegant, brasserie-style spot boasts leather banquettes, attentive staff and a wide-ranging menu of British dishes. Start with Welsh cold cuts or oak-smoked octopus and crispy pork, followed by Brecon lamb or beef Wellington – and don’t miss the Taffy apple cider tatin, which is big enough for two to share.”

and it sitting (in what I regard as pretty good company) in said Guide in terms of Cardiff eateries with the likes of Thomas by Tom Simmons, Asador 44,  Heaneys and the Heathcock.

My usual reference people seemed to have bypassed it (a bit of a worry), but the fixed price menu at £22 for 2 course and £26 for 3 is price wise (as to value for money, a very different thing, we shall see) pretty competitive in the current Cardiff market.

On arrival, it is quite a plush space

Back in the day, as a paranormal (what we use to call paralegals) at Kenge and Carboys (I am not quite that old), I use to regularly attend district judge hearings in the place when it was the old county Court.  District Judge Hendicott is the name I most recall from the 100s of hearings I must have attended.  Place was an absolute dump then, so I’m glad it has been tarted up a bit.

Back to food, it is always nice to see a set menu with nothing on it attracting the dreaded supplement (the same cannot be said for the dinner set menu where a hefty £7.50 supplement applies to the rump steak).

With only three starters on offer (nothing intrinsically wrong with that),

it did seem a bit odd in August to have soup (did sound quite nice mind) on there.

I know our summer has been unbelievably shxte and I have often yearned for a hearty stew on the seemingly never ending days of incessant drizzle, but soup does strike me as rather out of kilter with the season and the rare warmish (Met Office code for “You are all going to die“) week we were having at the time of this visit wasn’t exactly conducive to soup.

Having discounted the soup and with J  having called shotgun on the Scotch egg, I was left with the dilemma of duplication or the salad. Many scoff at salads, but I actually think they are quite an  underrated dish. 

Whilst in uninventive hands they can be boring, and not dressing a salad should be a hanging offence, there is a lot of scope to produce something really interesting in salad form. The menu description suggested this one could fall into the latter category.  

Plus points here were nice candied walnuts, with that pleasing contrast of sweet and bitter, an anise hit infused into the pear slices and a decent portion size.

Negative points were a slightly boring mix of salad leaves (I couldn’t discern any of the advertised chicory) and a disappointingly bland and decidely unwhipped/rather flaccid “goat cheese” elements. I have not had Pant Ys Gawn cheese before, but on this showing I won’t be searching it out to try again if am honest (looked and tasted eerily like burrata to me).

The scotch egg was a pretty big bugger,

which the (just) requisite gooey yolk.

The meat wrapped around the egg had a nice flavour (decent level of seasoning) to it, as did the salami crisp that adorned it. On the negative side, I thought the accompanying  tomato jelly, Henderson’s relish and Breacon vodka bloody Mary sauce were all a bit underpowered and the breadcrumb shell could have been just a tad crispier.

On to the mains,

again the number of choices was small and further reduced by my general dislike of (farmed, no way at the price it was going to be wild) salmon (always find it very flabby and bland in flavour)  The wider dish sounded nice, just not the central salmon ingredient (which I would worry would be overpowered, even if I liked its flavour).

The gnocchi description referred to it as being plant based, so presumably they dispense with the egg. That and the use of plant based cheese (thus not cheese at all, as lacking milk, is it) put me off that dish.

I do rather feel sorry for vegetarians, who seem (like it or not) to have vegan food foisted on them with it often being the only viable option available to them   Easier for restaurants I suppose, as kills two birds (not very vegan or veggie that) with one stone, but I would pressume that if veggies wanted to go vegan they would choose to be so rather than be just vegetarian?

I am an avowed omnivore, so was drawn to the meat dishes.  Both the slow cooked pork belly (was the darling of many a kitchen for eons, but seems to have rather dropped out of people’s consciousness, such that I saw it advertised in Waitrose as a “forgotten cut” – I mean really, as have the previously ubiquitous lamb shanks) and the chicken appealed to both of us, so we decided to order each.

The pork was a fulsome portion

with tender well flavours pork, a robust chorizo jam (which helped address some underseasoning issues elsewhere) and a meaty gravy (touch of sweetness added by the medieval mead element).

I also enjoyed the chargilled hispi cabbage (needed more salt though) and a nicely tart apple sauce

Negatives were an overall lack of seasoning (which lead to a bland, but crisp crackling stick), a somewhat uncrisp pommes Anne

and a pointless garnish (never understand why so many restaurants insist on this sort of frippery which adds nothing to the dishes they adorn).

In terms of the chicken,

again a big portion.

Good flavour to the chicken, which did not suffer from the pork’s absence of seasoning, but it lacked the really crispy skin that is one of  the joys of a chicken. The chicken breast (a supreme, with the retention of the bone  generally adding flavour) was nicely juicy, but I question what the Welsh sparkling wine brine (over a basic brine) brought to the dish.

I liked the mushroom and truffle croquette, but you needed to be a fan of that distinctive earthy truffle flavour to enjoy it. J wasn’t and passed it to me.

The potato element here was advertised as a galette, but not sure why it was called that over the pork dish’s pommes Anna as they seemed identical to me. It benefitted from being a bit more crispy than the one that came with the pork dish.

The gravy/jus wasn’t discernably different (despite the at odds menu descriptions) from the one with the pork dish (at least to my, albeit unrefined, palate).

A welcome bit of greenery, in the form of tenderstem, was al dente (overcooked veg is the bane of many a hotel restaurant). The same garnish as on the pork was equally unwelcome here.

With desserts,

as with the soup starter, sticky toffee pudding seeming a rather odd August addition and J dislikes cheese cake. This left the lemon drizzle cake, with the rather intriguingly/confusingly named Eton mess cream. I mean isn’t Eton mess strawberries and crushed meringue mixed into whipped cream? As such, I was slightly perplexed as to the cream bit? Was it more cream on top of the already whipped cream? I initially misread it as Eton mess ice-cream, which actually sounds rather nice.

With the size of the starters and mains, and nothing really appealing, we decided to pass on the puds.

Drinks

As we had decided to knock work on the head for the week, booze was on the menu.

After last week’s rant at restaurant wine prices, my point was rather proved by the prices here. The Lunaka Pinot Noir (a distinctly average Chilean wine in my experience) is on the list at £11.20 for a 175ml glass and £34.95 for a bottle. This wine retails at £8.99, so you are looking at a mark up of over 3.8 times the retail price for this wine.

Beers is even worse with a pint of Heineken (which they should pay you to drink, rather than the other way around) a whooping £7.45 a pint (12 x 330ml bottles cost you £12 in a supermarket, which equates to £1.37 a pint and 5.4 x £1.37 coming in at £7.40). How that sort of mark up is justified on beer is beyond me.

Whilst tempted to just have water, I noted that the small print on the drinks list states that you can have all wines offered by the glass in 125ml format (when did the standard 125ml wine pour of my youth become an oddity?).

No prices are given for the 125ml pour, although logically you would think it should be 50% of the price of a 250ml glass size (I mean why would it be more to simply pour half as much).

I rather begrudgingly went for the MC Excellens Cuvee Especial Crianza, which is on list as £11.90/£14.90 for 175ml/250ml glasses

and £44.95 for a full bottle

It retails at £12.59, so based on the bottle price here it is over 3.5 times retail (but strangely it seem to be marginally cheaper to order 3 x 250ml glass – 3 x £14.90 = £44.70  – than a whole bottle at £44.95🤷).

As for the logic of a 125ml glass being half the price of a 250ml glass, well logic be damned with it costing £8.50 which equates to £17 for 250 ml (so proportionately you pay 14% more for the smaller glass format, all of which hardly encourages responsible drinking). My simple question in terms of this is “Why?”.

Decent rather than stellar wine this, 

with ripe fruit and oak (the latter not overpowering), which worked well with the pork.

Looking further up the list, it is to me unacceptable to have a wine in the form of the Chateau L’Evangile (a very good Pomerol claret) for just under £600 on the list with no vintage details. 

I mean you would be barmy not to ask if contemplating buying this, as it is a late bloomer and it would be criminal to drink it to young when paying that sort of money, but they must know so why don’t they say upfront?

The usual excuse of “We have various vintages of that wine and when sell out of one we put next one up and it is a faff to change the menu” just doesn’t wash here. I mean how many nigh on £600 bottles do they sell to be able to validly run that argument!!! My guess is they have and will sell none.

The 2018 vintage of that wine goes for around £200 a bottle (which would provide for a nearly £400 mark up on this wine – good luck selling that and if anyone is contemplating buying it please get in touch as I have a bridge in London to sell you for a very good price, free delivery, subject to a 50% desposit payable into a Cayman Island account) and that it still too young, with Jancis Robinson (knows a thing or two about wine) having suggested that the drinking window for that vintage doesn’t start until is 2028!!

I mean at these prices they could charge £200 corkage and you would still be £185 + better off if you bought your own bottle of this wine to drink in!!!

Verdict

Despite some niggles, predominantly relating to the oddly winter nature of the menu as a whole and a lack of seasoning on the pork dish, the fixe prix lunch menu here represents pretty good value in my book.

Hearty and pretty tasty (if not quite as nuanced on the flavour front as the menu descriptors may have suggested), for the £22 (for 2 course) price tag, we regarded it as money pretty well spent.

The addition of a bit more seasonality would be something I think the kitchen should consider going forward.

Whilst the food is good value, the same cannot be said of the booze prices, with 2 glasses of a modest wine upping the bill by nearly 50% (a bottle would have more than doubled it). The wine list looks pretty overpriced to me.

Based on our lunch I think it is fair to say it is a rung below the set priced lunch offerings at the likes of Heaney’s, Gose and Thomas, but it’s a fair bit cheaper and to my mind it operates as a pretty good value option for lunch in town (especially if not drinking booze).

True be told I didn’t have very high expectations, hotel restaurants all to often disappoint, but I was pleased that those expectations were surpassed.

We book ended the visit here with visits to Curado Bar

which certainly offers better value on the booze front. Can’t go wrong with a vermut and a good bottle of garnacha on a Friday afternoon.

Details

Address: Westgate St, Cardiff CF10 1DA

Website: click here