Review: Montpellier Lodge, Cheltenham

Just a quickie, this. The Montpellier Lodge is a relatively new opening in Cheltenham, up in the top corner of the Montpellier Gardens. It’s a nice spot, and they’ve got a glass-walled outer dining room and a cosier indoor room beyond the bar. Modern decor, nicely done.

My first problem is the service. We’ve been in once for brunch, once for dinner, and both times the service staff have been… huh. I guess “laid back” is the only way of putting it. All the urgency of a cat deciding whether it feels like moving out of a sunny spot in the hall. This seems to be backed up by the kitchen, which was also pretty slow on both occasions. Neither time was the restaurant anywhere close to full. Haha… and this time when our meals arrived 30 minutes after ordering the waitress was nice enough to add “chef apologises for the delay, it was the slow cooking of your short rib.”

So now I’ve waited half an hour just to be told that I look stupid enough to believe that awful excuse? Ugh. And also, with the restaurant near empty maybe one of the service staff could have sparked up the wit to come and apologise for the delay some time during the half hour?

I do tend to prefer to stick to reviewing the food, but the Montpellier Lodge is zero-for-two on service so it needs mentioning.

Foooood. Maureen had a confit duck leg with oriental noodles. It was a nicely config leg, very softly yielding meat. Good noodles. Though the overall flavour of the dish was “generic oriental” rather than having any distinct flavours. Meanwhile I had the slow-cooked short rib in a bourbon gravy. Wow. I could actually hear my arteries snap-crackle-and-popping with all the salt. Okay, that’s hyperbole. If it wasn’t edible I would have said something. But it was far too salty to be the joyful plate of food it deserved to be. Because the meat was very good, and through the salt there was some deep flavour in the gravy. Fries alongside were pretty good, little pot of coleslaw okay.

But this just wasn’t £20 worth of plate, which they seemed to think it was. Maureen’s duck much more reasonable at £12.50. But with that serious over-salting and two occasions of poor service with zero excuse for it, you won’t find me visiting the Montpellier Lodge again in a hurry.