A corporate convention took us for an away day to Lingfield Park. It answers the question as to what race courses do when there are no races: they host conferences and other events. Apart from wanting to go somewhere fairly remote, there cannot be many more reasons to go to this hotel, as it is convenient for nothing else except the race course as far as I could work out. Being on a race course has its fascinations but it is a culture that is not part of my mind set.
I like Marriotts You know where you are, and there are seldom any disappointments. You might not be able to tell where you are from the decor of the room, but that's ok, because the rooms have pretty much everything, and are comfortable. But what of the food? Marriott is not a brand renowned for cutting edge culinary output, but again, that is ok. The organizer told me that there would be nothing challenging: boring was what she wanted, but it turned out to be good boring.
Lunch was in one of the function rooms. I had been misled into thinking it was going to be nothing much more than sandwiches and wraps, but in the event, it was a far more sumptuous spread for the eighty or so people attending:
There was an attractive mixture of hot and cold snack sized foods, and my plate ended up like this:
So, on my plate is a small glass of prawn cocktail, a cold meat wrap, a mini cheeseburger (cold), a sausage roll, some potato wedges, tempura prawns and a pastry parcel with unknown ingredients. The trick with buffets like this is to not hang around and get in there whilst there is some chance of it still being hot, and it was, some of it scoring an 8.5 on the CHOF scale. There was plenty of choice, and the dishes were renewed when seemingly empty. The mini cheese burgers were a bit of a disappointment as they had clearly been allowed to cool down too much, and there had never been any opportunity for the cheese to melt. Otherwise it was quite imaginative, but unfortunately suffered from the uniformity of taste and colour that buffet food can do some times. Well done Marriott, as my expectations were exceeded.
The dinner, which had been subject to menu pre-selection, was based around a carvery. I had a tomato and basil soup to start:
This had all the appearances of a home made-type soup (exact provenance uncertain) but surely stood out from the output of processed soups. It was hot, tasty, piquant and scored a 9 on the CHOF scale proving that they can do it when they want to.
The carvery was good news and bad news. Sensibly people were called up by table, but with ten tables, and staff who were not the fastest, the last table were served well after the first table had cleared their plates.
There is a mixture on my plate of all kinds of things consisting of roast beef, roast turkey, cauliflower cheese, ratatouille, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, and I could also have had other vegetables, stuffing, or alternate meats. The choice was good, but I don't know what the vegetarian or fishatarians did. As you can see, there was an arrangement for heating the chafing dishes, but not surprisingly, the result was mixture of hotness ( from a 6 to an 8), not helped by being the 7th out of 10 tables. Nevertheless, the quality was excellent, and it exceeded my expectations for hotel mass catering.
Breakfast was the standard buffet full English.
They have made it look quite attractive, and without any prior planning on my part, I was pleased to note that scrambled egg was not over cooked and was hot enough, and the overhead heating lights kept the dishes adequately hot. I could find no fault with breakfast which was as predictable as one would expect in a Marriott.
Overall, my expectations were exceeded. I have stayed there before and the food has not been as good a quality as on this occasion. Staff were helpful and polite, and bore the corporate influx well. I will definitely being staying loyal to the Marriott brand when predictability is what it required.
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