A short cab journey brought me to the Best Western Cutlers Hotel
on George Street in Sheffield. The receptionist was friendly and soon I was
checked in to my room (room 203 on the second floor). The elevator was slow and
I wished I’d taken to the stairs instead, but soon it arrived with a dull thud
and I quickly found my room.
Room 203 was fine: a huge bed (two singles pushed together) a
decent bathroom with proper taps – none of that designer rubbish offered by so
many hotels, but proper taps with 'hot' and 'cold' written on them AND a plug
on the end of a chain. Perfect! I wouldn't have to spend hours working out
which was hot and which was cold and I wouldn't need a degree in mechanical
engineering to figure out how to depress the plug and stop the water from
leaving the sink.
WiFi was free, there was a flatscreen television on the wall –
after dinner with a colleague in Bill's near Millennium Square I watched the
BBC news – and then, after a broken night (I rarely sleep well in hotels) I
began to look forward to the breakfast room, which was located in the basement.
I'm so glad I didn't have dinner in the hotel's restaurant because it
completely lacked atmosphere and, because of this, there was nobody else dining
there. Bill's provided much-needed hubbub, and by that I mean other diners,
people, music, laughter, everything that my hotel restaurant lacked.
I was hoping that the hotel breakfast would deliver something
special, but it didn't. For a start the room was horribly bright and white and
there were supposedly 'trendy' distressed park benches and tables and a meagre
self-service option at the far end of the room. Brightness of this magnitude
simply doesn't work in a hotel breakfast room, in my opinion. It was like being
in the garden furniture section of a large garden centre – not an ideal place
to enjoy the first meal of the day.
Boxed cereal, tinned fruit and a banana-flavoured yoghurt: that
was the offering in front of me, but a waitress eventually appeared and took my
order from a small menu on the table: scrambled egg, toast and fried mushrooms.
I realised that fried mushrooms were no longer my thing. I don't mind them raw
in a salad or as part of, say, a cheese salad sandwich, but fried: ugh! Greasy
and slippery mushrooms are simply not pleasant.
The most irksome thing about the breakfast was a dirty cereal
bowl. Without my glasses on I mistook the dried food stuck on the inside of the
bowl for some kind of logo – how foolish and stupid am I? It turned out to be
dried food. Unfortunately I had already tipped my bran flakes into the bowl and
added the milk, so I persevered, but vowed to check everything else that came
my way. Fortunately it was a one-off mistake, but it made me feel doubly
relieved that I had opted for Bill's last night and not the hotel restaurant.
In fact, I should have gone to Bill’s for breakfast.
Right now, rather than use my own lap top in the room, I am
sitting at a wooden table just off the main staircase using the hotel's
computer (a PC). Other than the aforementioned dirty bowl, the Cutlers Hotel
was pleasant. I get the feeling that it was once an office building, and not a
purpose-built hotel, as the main staircase screamed 'office block'. There's a
large stained glass window that runs from the top to the bottom of the main
stairwell and a carpet matching the window's design.
This isn't a 'grand hotel' but it's fairly pleasant, and bang in
the centre of Sheffield. Despite its central location, it's quiet and peaceful
and 'off the beaten track' but only minutes on foot from the Crucible Theatre
and Millennium Square where all the decent restaurants are to be found: Cosmo,
Smoke Barbecue, Piccolino's, Cafe Rouge, Brown's, Pizza Express and, of course,
Bill's.
A brief word about Bill's. I remember visiting the first ever
outlet in Lewes, East Sussex, back in the days when Bill's was simply an independent
restaurant – circa 2010. I went there with Miles Jenner, head brewer and
managing director of Harveys of Lewes, a fantastic, traditional brewer of fine
English cask ales (my description, not theirs). Harveys of Lewes brews a beer
specifically for Bill's – or it did back in 2010. The outlet in Lewes, East
Sussex, was everything one might expect from an independent restaurant: pine
tables and a traditional but quirky menu catering for all needs and meal
occasions. I was surprised to hear that expansion was on the cards for Bill's,
but a few months, possibly a couple of years later, I visited Bill's in
Leamington Spa and then yesterday here in Sheffield, and all was well. Last
night I ordered roast chicken with sweet potato fries and a couple of glasses
of Merlot, rounded off with a light pecan pie and a cup of tea. My colleague
enjoyed a rack of ribs. Why they thought I would be capable (alone) of drinking
a huge pot of tea just before bedtime I don't know, but I do know that it
contributed in some small way to my broken night's sleep. That comment about
'catering for all needs and meal occasions' rung true of the Sheffield Bill's
as, in addition to dinner there were lunch and, indeed, breakfast offerings on
the menu.
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