Merlins Bar in Newport

Stood at bar for 10 minutes to be told no bar service ( no idea why and no sign). Went to table and ordered after 10 minutes.. drinks arrived 20 mins later. Not busy just poorly managed. So 40 mins to get a drink in a very average bar at expensive prices..

I am a championship golf member at Celtic Manor. While on table service and working from my laptop, I was chased for payment for a pot of tea and a packet of crisps while in the middle of consuming them. (I understand they likely get some runners) but even upon verifying my golf member status, I asked to pay when I was finished; they still insisted on payment immediately or locking a payment card in a lock box. The service didn't precisely project luxury or trustworthiness in its members.

Went for a quick snack - had a pint spilled all over one of us. No apology, staff were super hostile and did not apologise. No where near 5* - staff are clearly unrefined and untrained. Bar was unclean, tables were messy and staff are useless. Save your money!!

Great place for a few drinks before and after your dinner, lovely atmosphere with a live pianist.. Service was also very attentive, they do charge for table service, but that's okay with me...

Horrendous food - it was all stale and cold. The festive platter was definitely not worth £58 - meat felt old, cheese was tasteless, and pork pies were freezing cold. The chocolate fondue was served cold and when we asked them to heat it up for us, the staff told us that the chef serves it cold. An absolute joke - chocolate fondue means “melted chocolate” in French so it’s definitely not meant to be cold. The head chef and team needs proper training. We paid £170 for 5 people for the worst meal ever - we will never go back and we highly discourage you from visiting if you’re thinking of going!

The resort, golf club and spa are amazing. Top quality. Beautiful buildings and scenery. The service at Merlin’s bar, though? SO SLOW it’s actually insane. We’ve had better service at a 2 star hotel, not a multi million pound 4-star country club resort. The staff are friendly at Merlin’s bar, but the most common response we heard when asking for anything was “I don’t know, sorry. Let me check”. And the service hasn’t just been dreadful for one isolated incident, either, or for a big rowdy group. We’re just a couple, two people, and here are the wait times we experienced for each thing: - Got back to hotel bar (Merlin’s Bar), and with only 2 people ahead of me in the queue somehow it still took the 5 staff over 15 minutes to serve drinks to three people. ☕️ - When they finally took my order, I asked for 1 soy latte and 1 normal hot chocolate. Not complicated. It took them 20 minutes to deliver it (most of the time they were just stood around chatting), and when they did deliver it, they got half the order wrong; gave us a soy latte ✅ and a soy hot chocolate ❌ - Ordered room service at midnight, and it didn’t arrive until 1am. Our order from the Night Owl menu must have been confusing. We ordered 1 sandwich, 2 bags of crisps, and a bottle of water. Like I said, extremely difficult >.<….. The hour wait was not worth the £18.50 including service charge, especially as they got the crisp flavours wrong too 😂 All in all, this has put a HUGE dampener on my girlfriend’s birthday, and she’s feeling extremely disappointed with this place. I was hoping to give her the kind of hotel spa experience we expected from such an expensive hotel, but she’s finished her birthday feeling let down and deflated. Thanks, Celtic Manor. For nothing

I find the atmosphere here very relaxing, the live music is good for the soul, food and drink is nice and reasonable for the location. When it’s busy, it can take a while, but I’ve never had any complaints and am a regular visitor with work. Highly recommend.

Can’t comment on food but service was dreadful. 45 minutes to serve when one deep at bar. Then £7.50 a pint in wales?! Are you sick?!

I have never met more filthy waiters in my life...

Slow service, poor quality food. Wouldn't mind paying the additional prices if the quality and service was better, sadly it hasn't improved since the last time I came here a year ago. It wasnt particularly busy but still had to ask somone if i could order food and a drink after waiting at the table for at leaat 20 minutes. Same when we wanted the bill to leave. Plenty of Staff working and all very friendly but seemed to all be very inexperienced, definitely lacks the level of customer service that you would expect from an established 5* hotel.

Shockingly bad service, even when just ordering drinks. Tried to order at the bar, was told a waiter would come soon to the table, nobody did. They've removed the app ordering. Not even a busy time! Sat there waiting for a drink for 30 minutes.

Unfortunately poor service throughout. We chose Merlin’s Bar for a light lunch, what a mistake. After numerous attempts to attract staff attention we finally placed our order for food deciding to have a drink after we had eaten. We waited over 45 minutes and we’re about to leave when our food arrived, Poor presentation accompanied tasteless poor quality food! A complete waste of our time, a long wait and nothing worth waiting for. Not being prepared to suffer further we decided to pay , leave and find refreshments elsewhere. When paying we made clear our long wait and poor food and we were listened to and politely ignored, which seemed to be the ethos of the ‘service’ offered in this establishment. Living locally we have been fairly regular users of the various facilities available, but very sadly from the early days when Mr Terry Matthews would be seen around the hotel its standards have continued to fall. After yet another further disappointing experience, despite over 20years of visiting l have no intention of returning. This was one continued disappointment too many.

Sort the cobwebs out on the walls (behind the piano seating by the window) sort the air vents in the ceiling out....the dirt and dust Expensive too but what you expect

Poor food. Surprising for this lovely hotel

Excellent staff and atmosphere. Great band last Saturday night too

Service really mixed, some days great but totally unreliable. Today they switched off the qr code ordering. When challenged they said it was "so they can offer table service". However, 4 out of the 6 staff were stood around chatting doing nothing (mainly managers/supervisors in suits) whilst people trying to order were having to go to the bar to order. It wasn't even busy. Need more consistency.

DO NOT EAT here. This place charges a fortunate and the quality of cakes were not what one would expect. Nice setting and cup of tea was fine.

Food took an age to come. Pizza was absolutely terrible, pretty sure it had been microwaved. No idea how they can serve this quality of food in what’s meant to be a high quality establishment. Don’t bother

There was one waitress manning the whole floor so service took forever. The menu is expensive but the food is cheap and disgusting. The bruschetta had a total of two sad cherry tomatoes on it and the cheese panini the tiniest smear of cheese and salsa. The gluten free bread is the cheap corner shop kind that had already disintegrated by the time the waitress got it over to our table.

I ordered a bacon panini. It was supposed to have blue cheese and tomato chutney in it. What I received was actually insulting. A slice of bacon with the tiniest bit of blue cheese and tomato chutney. The bread was a cheap baguette. It cost almost £10, the profit they must make on them is a killing! I complained to the waitress and whilst she did take the price of the panini off the bill I basically ended up going hungry.

I would avoid dinning here! Family, friends and I came to have some lunch, we ordered chicken sandwiches and a pizza. The order took an inexcusable long time to arrive, and they came in as three separate allotments. In other words, friends had to wait for their main course to arrive whilst I had received mine ahead of theirs. Chips were surprisingly over cooked and the service was unacceptably slow… although, the waitresses had a positive work attitude and were apologetic for the long wait.

Great atmosphere, debs n the doctor as always were brilliant,enjoy nights here,drinks a bit pricey but remember where you are.

🚨 Don’t do it. 🚨 The staff are friendly. The pizza is disgusting. The bruschetta is barely adequate. Just a slab of goats cheese dumped on overly hard bread. Simply awful. How can a resort that boasts so many facilities, serve food at the level of a wetherspoons.

Went there today for my brothers 17th birthday as we had been playing mini golf so we went for a drink and a small bite to eat 2sandwiches a wrap and a pizza also 1 round of drinks came to 80 pounds and the food came one of the sandwiches was basically bread and butter next to no filling and the wrap well a mouse would have said and rest please it was tiny considering it was nearly 11 pound on its own and it didn't even come with the red onion and rocket rocket salad like the menu state's can't fault the taste taste of food it's just it was a hell of a lot of money for what we had

Service was adequate, lunch and drinks were lovely. The double espresso was especially good.

Basically, it's only good for a drink. Goat's cheese bruschetta is the only item worth eating on their menu. We had niçoise salads, poor quality vegetables, quail eggs overdone probably days old, hallumi grilled last week, salmon done in the morning served cold and chicken old as a shoe. We can also agree about the pizza comment of another, no difference than bad frozen pizza. Unplanned visit on the way home, seating area is enjoyable as always, today we decided to have food... nearly a total disappointment!

I went to eat, I ordered chicken ceaser salad Unfortunately it wasn't my cup of tea, also I ordered beef burger but it came with bacon so I couldn't eat it, but thankfully they canceled it for me, also I had pizza, but it was like frozen pizza.

Public bar within the Celtic Manor resort. Plenty of space for meetings, formal and informal. Relatively small bar menu but nice enough, just be patient when it’s busy as service for drink and food can be slow.

Nice bar with the usual impeccable Celtic Manor service. They have no draft beer here although the pressurised IPA is reasonable. The barman said they are going to get Cwtch from Tiny Rebel in Rogerstone yeaah!!! This is the same great beer they have at the golf club bar. Great news. Lovely sitting here in the sun relaxing.