Hotel Catalina

Rating: 3

We ate Dinner here in September 2026.

Beef cheek fettucine Steak with chips, salad and cafe de Paris butter Sticky toffee pudding

Well.

Well, well, well.

We didn’t expect that. Frankly, we didn’t expect much. But Hotel Catalina impressed us, especially in the dessert department. It simply had no business being that good. The initial impression was very ordinary. It looked like the pudding had been sliced off a loaf with some toffee sauce poured over and a blob of white stuff on top. But boy howdy, this was the best dessert we have had in a long time. The pudding was sumptuously moist, but the real star was the zingy citrus flavour which impregnated the sauce and possibly also the white blob. Va-va-voom.

While we were less enraptured with the mains, they were no slouch. The pasta in particular went down a treat. The steak was a bit chewy, but then rump steak be like that, and at least it was properly cooked. The chips were abnormally good, while the salad was serviceable. Neither of us thought highly of the cafe de Paris butter, with Business Andy considering it bland while The Fee-Rex thought it too spicy. Those are opposites, we hear what you’re thinking. Yeah, we know. Go figure.

As a final thought, the service was patchy. On one hand they obviously had a dedicated bartender and the cocktails came out promptly and professionally. On the other hand, the wait for the mains was extremely long. Shout out to the free tampons in the ladies room though. Applicator to boot. Respect.