text: Oh dearnnMelville Castle has been a hotel and private function venue for many years only just opening to the public as a barrestaurant last month November We went one Saturday previous to a midweek Birthday celebration to see what it was like Alarm bells were already ringing as we left after this brief visit We went on the first day of service and were told upon trying to order drinks that one of only two lagers on tap were off Before even receiving our drinks the manager came to take our food order We were only there for bar snacks for which the menu had not yet been prepared The manager recited the bar menu from memory and we ordered chicken breast nachos and chipsnnAbout minutes later our incorrect drinks order arrived After being left for roughly minutes in an empty restaurant our food eventually arrived This is when the wait became self evident The nachos were an obviously hastily assembled plate of nacho chips topped with instead of the advertised salsa sweet chilli dressing me neither and cold grated cheddar despite the plate being piping hot There is a Tesco minutes down the road go figure The chips were served hot yet still raw in the middle Asking for the bill we had to wait a further minutes for the bar staff to calculate the cost on a calculator in the absence of a working tillnnStupidly despite this we gave them the benefit of the doubt It was opening night places have hiccups these things happen And continued to happen in our casennWe returned four days later for our Birthday celebration The Birthday guest was Vegan With such a strict dietary requirement we always give plenty notice and forewarning Being told that this was no problem and would be noted alongside our booking it was disappointing to find that there had been absolutely no communication with the kitchen and the Birthday guest was offered either vegetables or beetroot risotto Interchangeable as starter and main nnWith such a dizzying array of options she chose the indeterminable serving of vegetables for starters and the beetroot risotto for mains The vegetable starter was a minuscule and completely unremarkable serving of cold oily roasted aubergine and pepper with some green leaves It was not bad but there was not anything to get wrong The beetroot risotto was a horrid plate of completely tasteless lukewarm gelatinous rice pudding coloured with what seemed to be purple food dye and surrounded by a neon green liquid nnFor the rest of us we ordered the soup Leek and Potato It was again unremarkable and initially served with slices of burnt melba toast and then bizarrely followed up with half a baguette five minutes later The goats cheese ciabatta was nice enough but nothing you could not easily make at home I ordered the Gravadlax of Wester Ross Salmon Pickled Cucumber Lemon Wholemeal Bread Dill mayo after being told that the fish mezze I had wanted was no longer available on the dinner menu after only four days of opening which ended up consisting of a couple insultingly thin wafers of salmon served without any lemon pickled cucumber or wholemeal bread but I did get an overly acidic dill mayonnMains consisted of the aforementioned flavourless and stodgy beetroot concoction The other two diners ordered the chargrilled aubergine which also came without half of the ingredients advertised on the menu I had the duck breast which again bore no resemblance to the menu description and instead of dauphinois potato was served with a disgusting saccharine green coloured mashnnComing to over ua without even being charged for the inedible risotto made this an unmitigated disaster of an evening As if this was not bad enough we received a phone call four days later from the manager to say that their debit merchant was unable to take our card payment without proof of us being in the restaurant and requested secure card details over the phonennThe staff were very nice apologetic and understanding but the rest of the experience did nothing to instil any faith in this establishment It was like an evening spent as unwitting extras in an episode of Fawlty Towers Farcical