Review of Quarantine UK - A Managed Quarantine Experience in 2021
Things you may find useful to know before you go into hotel quarantine in the UK based on my stay in a Quarantine Hotel in London
Food In Hotel Quarantine London UK in 2021
Now I’m no food critic or blogger so this is just my honest opinion of the food I received during my manged hotel quarantine at a Holiday Inn near Heathrow, and it is heavily biased towards my own personal taste.
Day 0 – Holiday Inn Quarantine - Tuesday Menu
Hotel Quarantine Dinner
The journey from South Africa had not been all smooth sailing with a missed connection in the middle turning my 24 hour journey into a 36 hour journey. I was tired, dehydrated and had been fighting a migraine for the last 2 hours, and in all honestly climbing into bed and sleeping it off was top of my priorities and the thought of food was enough to make me feel nauseous, but still there was something amiss about this meal.
First impressions of my first hotel quarantine meal were good, it was ordered as we started our somewhat tedious check-in paperwork and it arrived at my door just minutes after I did on a tray with a nice silver cover over the hot plate and a beautiful looking dessert on the top. A black dinner napkin and proper cutlery on the side completed the tray. Since I was expecting from reports I had read to be eating using disposable cutlery for the next 10 day this was a pleasant surprise.
On lifting the lid the meal looked OK and smelled pretty good, and a tentative dip into the pot pie under the crust revealed plenty of steak filling with maybe a mushroom or two somewhere underneath all the thick dark gravy. The steak was cooked beautifully, the meat was very tender, and the gravy was rich.
The thing that was amiss in my opinion was the potatoes. Did I say potatoes? I mean heavily salted smash. Since when did the Holiday Inn start serving smash? Thinking maybe I was tired I had a little more steak and then tried the potatoes again, maybe they were tasting a bit better, I had got past the heavy salted flavour now. A few more mouthfuls of steak pie and then some more potato. Nope, I can still detect smash, no matter how creamy and heavily salted it may have been it still tasted grainy and of smash. Maybe it’s because I am not used to such heavily salted mashed potato, but to me I thought “smash not mash”.
Something which was distinctly missing from this main course, in my opinion at least, was vegetables of any sort, a few carrots would have been a very welcome addition.
Dessert looked beautiful, but I found a little disappointing. It was supposed to be fresh vanilla cheesecake, but I found it a little bit stodgy and heavy, the texture was a little grainy and not quite right.
Perhaps on another day when I was less tired I would have enjoyed the whole meal a little more, for tonight though it was all just a bit rich, over seasoned and in the case of dessert a bit stodgy.
So my UK Quarantine Food Diary doesn’t get the best of starts, but the big question is will it improve? Read on to find out in my UK Quarantine Food Diary Day 1
Not what you're looking for? To find out more about what is included in your UK hotel quarantine and how it all works read my full review of managed hotel quarantine here.
If you just want a quick summary of how the food works in UK qaurantine and what it is like then read my Overview of UK Quarantine Food here.
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