Sunday lunch at the Vale Resort

My parents-in-law bought us a voucher for Sunday lunch at the Vale Resort for our third wedding anniversary, and we finally booked to go last Sunday. We decided it would be good to double it up as a belated anniversary celebration and a Valentine's lunch!

It was a very cold day so I got wrapped up in my coat, hat and scarf. I only had to walk for about 20 seconds to get from the car park to the hotel, but I love any excuse to put on all my winter layers. However, I must admit that I didn't realise just how black my outfit was until I looked at this photo after we got home.

We were given the menu to have a look at as soon as we were seated in the Vale Grill. As we had a specific Sunday Lunch voucher, the menu was nice and simple with five options for each course. Our voucher was for a 2 course dinner, but we could also add a third course for £3 each if we wanted to. We knew the portions would be very generous and nothing grabbed our attention on the starter menu, so we decided we'd go for mains and desserts rather than going for the full three courses. 

For our mains, we both ordered the Roasted Sirloin of Welsh Beef. I tend to choose chicken whenever we eat out and I'm not a big fan of pork loin, so the beef was the obvious option for me. The main was made up of a few slices of beef (obviously), roast potatoes, a big Yorkshire pudding, green beans, mangetout, broccoli, roasted carrots and parsnips, cauliflower cheese, and gravy. 

Just look at the size of this! The green vegetables, roasted vegetables and cauliflower cheese were served in separate dishes so that we could help ourselves, and it's fair to say that we had a very generous helping of everything. Neil doesn't like cauliflower cheese and I love it, so that was an excellent plus for me as it was one of my favourite parts of the meal! The beef was cooked just right, and the roasted root vegetables and the roast potatoes in particular were excellent. I'm not ashamed to admit that I completely cleared my plate... in fact, I'd have been very ashamed if I hadn't. 

We'd already decided what we wanted for dessert before taking another look at the menu - pistachio panna cotta! I love panna cotta, whatever the flavour, and it's always a nice light option after such a big main meal. 

This dessert was exquisite, and I'm not just talking about the pretty presentation. Every aspect of this dish was absolutely delicious, even the little accompanying wafer. The toasted marshmallows were a stroke of genius and perfectly complemented the pistachios. Chocolate would never make it into my top five choices when it comes to ice cream flavours so I thought that might let the dish down for me, but this particular chocolate ice cream was lovely. 

At the end of the meal, we had a bill of £4.30 for our two pints of diet Coke. I was expecting them to be at least £3 each, so that was a pleasant surprise! If we'd have paid for our meal, it would have been £17.95 each. I think this is pretty good value when you take the quality and quantity of the food, and the quality of the resort itself, into account. 

I can definitely confirm that we'd be happy to visit the Vale Resort for Sunday lunch again. Have you ever been to the Vale for a meal? What did you think?