Celtic Manor has long been one of my favourite hotels, but this stay very much disappointed me. The hotel was as good as ever, the room was great, but dinner in the Olive Tree was very disappointing indeed - starting from an almost hostile greeting (“Have you been here before?”, “Then you know it’s £40 then”) to an extraordinarily long wait for the drink I’d ordered, to an absence of table-service in general (I know it’s buffet, so less service is required, but the table was slow to be cleared, it was difficult to get attention to order another drink, and when I needed to ask a question it took so long to get any attention). They redeemed themselves a little by providing an excellent ‘not on the menu’ pudding (I’m dairy/free, there were no dairy-free options on the buffet) but not enough to make me want to come back.