Manoir Hovey

Reviewer: Not provided on Fri 21 Jul 2006 rated 8 out of 10.

A great lakeside resort hotel, with many features that make it a top destination. At high season, the low end rooms go for $370 per night, including service but not including taxes of 14%, with more luxurious accomodations at $400-$500 per night and more.

For that kind of money, one would expect the dinner and breakfast (included in the rates quoted above) to be superb without limitation. We found that the food was very delicious, but the sparse quantities were almost a joke by the end of dinner.

The 3-course dinner (quoted at $60 per person, plus 15% service and 14% taxes for non-guests) began with a complimentary "appetizer," consisting of a tiny piece of yellow beet (literally the size of a small cube of sugar), covered with a paper thin slice of goat cheese (same size as the beet), served on a plate that must have been 8" x 4". A magnifying glass would have been handy in tackling this tiny morsel!

First course: an appetizer of "lightly braised" smoked salmon, about 2"x1"x1/2" thick, served with a very small row of chopped veggies, topped with alfalfa sprouts. Not much time needed to finish this off. Main course: two very nice pieces of loin of lamb, totally free of fat, and done exactly as ordered (medium, with a bit of pink). Delicious lamb, but again very small, possibly not even 4-5 oz. of meat, with small but delicious side orders of vegetables and a few slices of potatoes.

For some reason, dessert is standard size, much larger than either of the previous two courses, and again quite good. Coffee and tea are included.

Breakfast was quite decent, but not outstanding for a resort of this supposed fame, rated by the provincial travel dept. as a five-star hotel. For example, we've had better cheese on a breakfast buffet at country inns at much lower cost. The fresh fruit salad was also fairly ordinary.

Beware the servers and other staff in this establishment. While the younger staff, many of them possibly students, provided excellent and polite service in the restaurant and elsewhere, the older staff tend to be impatient and sometimes rude, especially when it is obvious that they are struggling to speak English. The younger staff are much more bilingual and have no problem serving English-speaking guests, with a much more polite attitude. Better overall service is expected when paying these kind of prices.

Thanks to an impatient and/or rushed waitress, we were not informed that the "vegetable omelet" contained a fine selection of fresh vegetables, and we opted instead for a fairly standard cheese omelet, only to be told by a neighboring table that the veggie omelet was excellent.

At dinner, the wine list was very good, and well priced, with good wines even available in the $30-$40 range. They also have a "happy hour" at the pool and pub, with great prices on a wide range of alcoholic drinks and beer from 4-6pm daily. One wouldn't think that the guests who can afford $500 or more per night would need to have reduced prices on drinks before dinner. It would be better to provide better value on the meals, and charge a normal price on pre-dinner drinks.

In summary, if you are dieting and love good food, try the Hovey. If you love to eat larger quantities, try another resort. Our cost for one night in a lower-end room, plus a few pre-dinner happy hour drinks and a lower-priced bottle of wine, plus tax: $512 (for two people).

We noticed that 90% of the cars in the parking lot were middle-class vehicles, and that the clientele were not especially well-dressed. Perhaps the upper class clients are going elsewhere?