The Champagne Bar

On Saturday we went out to The Champagne Bar in The Cardiff Thistle for lunch. Before you ask, this is not something we do routinely on Saturdays, it just happened to be ‘my nearly birthday’. The real thing is tomorrow but Tuesdays, being workdays and schooldays, aren’t ideal days to go out and celebrate really.

I’ve got to say, I was well impressed with the whole thing on Saturday. Having lived in Cardiff for a long time now, I’ve seen the Parc Hotel go through various guises through the years. I’ve had the occasional drink there and been to a few events but haven’t been there recently. To be honest, from the outside it hasn’t changed much and could do with a bit of a tidy-up but inside is a different story.

We were greeted by a lovely member of staff who asked us if we wanted to go straight to our table or sit on the comfy chairs in the contemporary-looking bar area first. We opted to sit on the very strokeable, velvety chairs to look at the menus and as it was The Champagne Bar, obviously we all went for a glass of bubbly to get in the spirit. I just love champagne and if money was no object it would always be my drink of choice. We asked if we could just have some starters to share where we were sitting rather than go our table and within minutes a dish of olives along with bread, oil and balsamic vinegar was with us. We tried to eat slowly but as is usual with ‘sharing’ dishes, we wolfed them down in minutes.

The staff left us for a while as we were genuinely savouring the champers and weren’t ready to move to our table. They seemed to sense when we were ready as before we had time to even think about the word ‘restless’, they called us to our seat in the award-winning Hamon’s Restauarant. And wow, the food was just so, so good. I had crispy pork, with a sort of caramelised, red cabbage and mash and it really was to-die-for. Everyone in our party must have enjoyed their food as nobody left anything on their plate. We left a respectable gap before asking for the dessert menus and once again in spite of the fact that it was a relatively small menu, I wanted everything on it. I went for the bread and butter pudding with a Jack Daniels sauce. And loath as I am to use the expression….. OMG! It was the yummiest pudding ever. One of the girls had the chocolate fondant with clotted cream and I’ve decided that next time I go to The Thistle in Cardiff , that’s the one I’ll try!

So yes, if you’re ever in Cardiff, which I’m reliably told is one of the ‘most happening cities in Europe’, why not stay at The Cardiff Thistle and then you can pay a visit to The Champagne Bar without worrying about getting home at the end of the evening.

Mrs C