Good morning. I'm on a bit of a tear as february got away from me and I need to finish my travelogue as the month ends . . . tomorrow. Also have to go sledding and watch the red carpet, so time is limited.
In 1997, while Zimbabwe was a far and better cry from where it is today, the country was not widely touristed outside of vic falls and perhaps a few other places. we were traveling in the eastern highlands for several reasons: its accessibility by car to our friend's house in harare, its remote and gorgeous countryside (think montana with huge deposits of boulders left behind by long melted glaciers) its fly fishing - reported to be on par with scotland, and the kicker: a remote cottage in a national forest belonging to friends of our hosts which we were welcome to use.
We had planed to stay in a hotel that evening en route to the remote highland cottage and had booked at an old resort hotel that was developed in the days of cecil rhodes to approximate a grand resort. scanning the reviews prior to departure gave us the idea that this would be a romantic idly with walks along flower lined pathways, delicious meals in a glamorous dining room and comfortable accommodations that would provide a good foundation of luxury prior to setting off to rough it for a couple of days in the wilderness cottage. Now, the sojourn in the cottage had been scrapped due to the risk of traveling with no spare if we get another flat, we will be doomed. So we were eagerly anticipating a few days of r&r, rhodesia style.
Check in seemed fine. MSH apologized for the fact that we were late on account of the car trouble and as there were about four people at the front desk and no other guests that we could see, we received ample attention from the front desk staff. MSH tends to eschew bellman, not in the way that my father might so as to save the tip, but because he doesn't want to trouble them with carrying his bag. So we set off down the hall as directed to our room.
The hallway was without doubt the first sign that things were not what they used to be at Troutbeck. The lighting, the width and length of the hall, and the threadbare wall to wall carpet with an oriental-esque pattern screamed one thing and one thing only: the shining. All we needed was a bloody necked pair of twins appearing in a mirage at the end and I would have gone screaming off in the car to that cottage, spare or no spare. But we are glass half full people, so we stuck with it and went down to our room. Now, in my experience, I prefer to go UP to a hotel room, but the resort is built into a bucolic hillside, so we went down.
To say that the room left a lot to be desired would be a gross understatement. I am OK with threadbare and appreciate the chintz laden splendor of the bygone days of understated elegance as well as anyone, but this was more of a basement lair with a prevailing damp and a bathroom that had been renovated so as to strip if of any charm, to say the least. Years later, when I gave birth to my big girl in the un-renovated wing of Mt. Sinai hospital in NYC, I went in to the bathroom for that awesome first shower after childbirth and exclaimed this reminds me of the bathroom at troutbeck!
MSH is a resolute optimist, so we don't let things like yucky rooms in deserted hotels get us down. We changed into our evening clothes and headed down to the dining room - we were, in fact, quite hungry after the stress and exertion of the day and were looking forward to a proper meal. The dining room was at the far opposite end of the hotel so we had the chance to stroll in a proper old fashioned way to take our evening meal.
Upon arrival, we were greeted by the vision of a man in evening wear sitting in a huge rattan chair, Mr. Rourke style, behind a desk counting money into a money box. Not just a few bills, but hundreds and hundreds of bills. He was not able to bring himself away from this absorbing task though we paused in front of his station, so we continued in to the dining room. And a grand dining room it was. Hundreds of tables were set, awaiting 500 or so phantom guests. That evening, there were exactly four parties in the dining room including us. An older couple, a foursome including a man with a grapefruit sized goiter on the side of his face and a group of business men.
Given the small number of guests that night, they had given most of the staff a night off so there were two older men who were there to serve us. A vestige of the grander time, they were also in tuxedos, but it seemed from the aroma that they were the same tuxedos that had been worn by the dining room staff for several generations. You might recall from an earlier post that I have an acute sense of smell, so this type of olfactory stimulation has a particularly profound impact on my ability to dig in to a meal. No matter, as one does we ordered the four course prix fix and some wine and had a few laughs about the flat tire and the roadside crew.
The menu, it seemed, was decidedly rhodesian: blanched asparagus soup, lemon sole, salad and a neapolitan ice cream dessert. Given the benefit of the exchange rate and to make up for the near disaster of the afternoon, we had sprung for a wine from the top half of the wine list and were enjoying it quite a bit when the first course arrived under a silver dome.
It was, in fact a blanched asparagus soup. quite blanched. two sad spears of pale asparagus floating in a pool of off white water in a huge bowl. tepid and completely inedible. we each took a bite, grimaced and washed it down with a glass of wine. the bus boy came to remove the plates a while later and luckily didn't seem to notice that the level of the soup in the bowl was more or less unchanged and that the asparagus spears were still floating there. luckily, he was happy to relay our request for another bottle of wine, which was going down a lot more easily than to food. the fish course, it goes without saying, was also inedible. and the salad greens seemed to have been flown in from england rather than just picked fresh out of a garden that had to be there, just around the corner.
We returned each plate to the dutiful busboy pretty much untouched, though MSH did a better job than I did at managing a few bites in a valiant effort not to insult these poor people, working diligently to serve an elegant and proper english meal in the middle of zimbabwe. the dessert was the crowning glory: a freezer burned melange of chocolate, strawberry and vanilla slivers with stale cake in between and a viscous strawberry compote over top. Even my starving sweet tooth couldn't manage it.
Our primary waiter returned after the busboy took another full plate back to the dining room to inquire as to whether everything was alright.
Waiter: Sir, I see that you are not eating very much, is everything alright?
MSH: Oh no, everything is fine. you see, my wife and I are just not very big eaters!
An absurd statement. This was in the era of our fattest fat times, those early married years when his family's habit of dessert and my family's habit of runny cheese and crackers before dinner merged to create our perfect union and packed about 10-15 pounds on to both of us. The plentiful wine that we enjoyed on the terrace of our first rental didn't exactly help.
The sweet earnestness with which MSH answered this inquiry was so endearing, the spectacle of the inedible food and the eeriness of the palatial empty dining room with its chandeliers and table after table set with china, silver and linens so overwhelming that I was overcome with an violent need to laugh. Were we in a more typical bustling restaurant setting, I might have been able to get away with it. But the echo factor here would have come in to play and the last thing I wanted to do was make a scene and further insult the very sweet waiter and his team. so i tried to stifle the laughter and conceal it under a fake coughing fit of sorts, which of course only made it worse. . . .and before long I was reduced to a silent shaking spasm of laughter so intense that i had tears streaming down my face. thank god, MSH had the brilliance to order a third bottle of wine which was able to quell the fit. we hesitated for a minute when offered a cheese plate, as we had just claimed a lack of appetite - thankfully we accepted the offer and within minutes a platter of the most delicious cheese and bread was before us. consistency be damned, we dove into that cheese plate and had to restrain ourselves from licking the plate clean at the end.
later than night, after MSH had chased off someone who seemed to think that our french doors were the entrance to their room, we resolved to leave the hotel we had rechristened YUCKbeck. Happily, we had the cover of the "car trouble" which gave MSH the requisite reason we were checking out a day early (some people might have been straight up and informed the manager that the room was dank, the food inedible and that we had a break in attempt over the night, but that's not how we roll).
I went back on line to see if Troutbeck was even still in business and noted that it is - trip advisor welcomed me to write a review of the hotel which I refrained from doing as the data is too aged. But that piqued my curiosity and I noted one recent review from LaurelHouse103 from West sussex. All these years later, his experience was quite similar to ours though they've obviously opened up the menu options a bit and cleaned the rooms. Lovely setting but disappointing service does not match it's $180 price tag...
I guess, should we ever have a reason to return, we'll book somewhere else.
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