Comfort, but at a Cost

We’re almost to the end of recapping the recent Canadian trip I took, and one of the last stops is going over the experience of the inn I stayed at. We’ll consider this mostly a restaurant review, as plenty what we’re going to discuss will be focused on the restaurant there, but I do want to first touch upon the actual inn itself as, if you’re going to go for the full experience here, it’s worth knowing how most (not all, as I didn’t check out the spa) of the amenities work out.

The Idlewyld Inn & Spa, in London, Ontario, is actually the second place that my wife and I have stayed at over the years. We previously had stayed at a small bed and breakfast, which was nice enough but the inn had a few rules (such as effectively giving the guests a curfew because the owners wanted to go to sleep early and locked the doors when they did) that we found restrictive. We eventually settled at the Idlewyld for two reasons. The first was that they weren’t a big, chain franchise and the second was that they had free breakfast. I will also sign up for a free meal, and it was far more casual, and less restrictive about the menu, than the bed and breakfast we were staying at before.

We stayed, for three days, in the smallest of the suites at the inn, wanting a comfortable experience with a fair bit of room. The suite was on the top floor of the three floor establishment, up at the front overlooking the parking lot and small bit of garden. The view wasn’t exceptional from the windows we had, but then it is an inn in a city so you take what you can get. Still, the room was comfortable enough, roomy with a small sitting area in case we wanted to sprawl. The bed was also nice, firm but not overly so, with sheets that were decently soft. It felt better than a bad at, say, a Holiday Inn or other franchise hotel, which did make sleeping there a nicer experience.

Honestly, the highlight of the room was the shower. The pressure from the showerhead was amazing, and the hot water heater was blazingly hot and felt limitless. Our house has pretty crappy water pressure, by comparison, and it has a tiny hot water heater (because the builders put it in the crawl space so it can’t be that big, which is a baffling decision) so to have a really nice, really hot shower that we could luxuriate in was a true pleasure. Even if I don’t think the room itself was worth the price (we’ll get to that in a bit), the shower almost makes me want to go back for that suite again.

In addition to the room itself, our stay also included complimentary breakfast from the hotel restaurant. The Idlewyld gets rave reviews from locals for its food, and at least at breakfast I can understand why. It’s a nice little early morning repast, with fresh fruit, granola, and yogurt, eggs, bacon and sausage, a variety of breads, and a full bagel spread including butter, cream cheese, capers, and smoked salmon. It’s a “serve yourself” mini buffet, and while not huge it does have enough variety to satisfy in the morning. Plus it’s a damn sight nicer than anything I’ve gotten from a continental breakfast at a standard hotel.

Of course, you’re pretty well paying out the nose for this experience. The suite, with complimentary breakfast and complimentary parking (so at least you don’t have to deal with pay parking on the street) was $300 CAD a night, and while you can say what you want about the CAD-to-USD exchange rate, that’s still well over $200 USD a night which feels quite expensive for a slightly larger than average room. Even with a great shower and good breakfast, it’s hard to justify spending that every time. You have to really want to spend it to do that more than once.

While we were at the hotel we did also attend their restaurant for dinner. The plan was to try the restaurant ourselves, just my wife and myself, and if we liked it we’d bring my sibling and their husband to it the next night. That didn’t happen, though, because, honestly, the food wasn’t good. I know people rave about the restaurant in London, but from what we had it’s hard to see why. Between overcooked food and a weird seasoning palette that didn’t agree with either of us, we didn’t enjoy the meal.

It did start off well enough, mind you. As a starter I got their Sou Du Jour (soup of the day) which happened to be an aged cheddar and ale soup. Described as an “improved beer cheese soup” by our server, the soup was great. It had a sharpness to the cheese that was complimented by the earthy, yeasty flavor of the ale. The texture had just a little chunkiness to it, which you get when you try to melt cheese into anything other than cream, but overall this soup was exceptional. If the rest of the meal could have been this good I would have been a happy camper.

For my entree I ordered the Ponzu Marinated Wild Boar Chop, which was a seared pork chop (don't let the wild boar fool ya), topped with sesame cucumber slaw, and served on a bed of lime scented forbidden black rice, toasted sesame seeds, micro cilantro, gochujang sauce, and it was gross. The slaw was very strongly picked, to the point that it basically masked the flavor of everything else. After I ate two bites of the full dish I scraped the slaw off and ignored it entirely because it didn’t taste at all right.

Sadly that didn’t help the meal in the slightest as the lime scented forbidden rice was also gross. It was too strongly citrus and, with the gochujang sauce mixed in, it had this off-putting flavor that made me not want to eat it as well. That effectively left me with just the pork chop itself, and that was completely overcooked. It was dry, tough, and not flavorful. I tried to eat through the chop, but eventually pushed it aside once I’d eaten enough to call myself “full” and didn’t bother to take the rest back to my room. I can’t say that they made it wrong, per se, as everything I hated about the meal was described on the menu (although, sure, the pork chop could have been less cooked to death) but in general I had no clue what the chef was thinking with the meal. Instead of creating this flavor symphony from all the Asian seasonings and sauces, it made a cacophony of flavors that fought each other, the meat, and my own mouth.

My wife, meanwhile, got the Prosciutto Wrapped Chicken Roulade, consisting of roasted chicken rolled up with peruvian pepper and wilted spinach filling, served with fried bocconcini, pesto fregola sarda, blistered tomatoes on the vine, broccolini, and romesco and while not as egregiously awful as my meal it still wasn’t great. The chicken with its stuffing was at least edible, if still cooked within an inch of its life to the point it was dry. The issue with all of this, though, was that it was so bland. My wife, as it turns out, frequently enjoys blander food as, she says, it lets her, “taste the natural ingredients.” And, in fairness to her meal, she did actually enjoy parts of it. But she did agree that it was overcooked and could have maybe used a little more seasoning. She ate half, took the rest back to the room to snack on later, and then decided not to eat it so… take that as you will.

There was a thought about getting dessert, but after the bad experience I had with the chef's weird flavor combinations I was hesitant to let them play on an expensive dessert as well. Items like a Chai Spice Crème Brûlée, Hazelnut Dacquoise, Matcha Cheesecake with Sable Crust all sound fancy, but they need a steady hand to make them work and I just didn't trust this kitchen could handle that. Plus, even in the best of circumstances, I'm not a huge fan of chai flavor, hazelnuts, or matcha. My wife didn't feel like taking a chance on any of them, especially because of the flavor combos, so we held off entirely.

Even without dessert, though, the whole thing was really expensive. Bear in mind we got a decent soup, one lackluster entree and a really terrible entree. All of that, with soft drinks, for $200 CAD with tip. The price, especially for a bad meal, just was not worth it. I don’t understand why people rave about this restaurant, especially for evening service, as this was one of the worst meals I’ve had, regardless of the price, in a long time. The price just made it even worse.

To be clear, none of this was the server’s fault. She was very nice, and incredibly attentive. We tipped her well because even if the food was bad she did her best to make the experience enjoyable. I hate when people take out bad food on a good server as it’s not as if they had a hand in cooking the meal. If she were working somewhere else I’d happily have her as a server again, but the food didn’t not prompt me to give the restaurant another chance, not for dinner anyway.

So yeah, overall the experience at the Idlewyld was uneven. On the one hand we liked the bed, the shower, and the breakfast. On the other hand the room wasn’t really big enough to justify the price of the stay, and the dinner was exceptionally bad no matter how much you pay. It left me feeling a little cold over the place in general. For the money I expect more, or better, or both, and this just didn’t feel like a value proposition I’d want to pay again. It was interesting to sample the experience once, but I can’t imagine I’m going to want to do it all again. Especially not that terrible dinner restaurant. It was just so very bad.