House of plates in Castlebar legal

06/09/2025: Lovely food and really well prepared and presented. Only gripe - two types of potatoes and texture much the same. Should add chips or roast or cubed to provide texture.

05/06/2025: First time to the Dining Room since the restaurant changed hands in recent years. We were on an overnight stay in Castlebar, and having read some great reviews (most notably The Irish Times), I was looking forward to dining there. Not the usual A La Carte menu on offer, and instead there's two set four-course menus to choose from.... we opted for menu offering good selection of fish, poultry and vegetarian dishes. We were warmly greeted by the restaurant manager Shirley and shown to our table. The restaurant was busy for a bank holiday Saturday night and there was a good atmosphere with reasonable sound levels (nothing worse than restaurant full of loud patrons and you can't hear yourself think literally!) Prompt service at the outset - with starters and mains ordered, along with a bottle of the house red (three to choose from). Overall the wine and drinks menu is varied and very reasonably priced. Both of our starters and main courses were - in a word - 'sublime' and we looked forward to tasting their desserts. However, that's where it all turned sour (for want of a better word) because we waited the best part of over 30 minutes to see a dessert menu. It felt like once the dishes for main courses were removed, they forgot we there, as other patrons came and went, and service seemed to be on the ball (many of them appeared to be local diners and were friendly with the manager and staff). When we finally were given a dessert menu, it then took some more time to be served. Overall, I enjoyed my dessert but alas my sister found her dish rather bland and tasteless.....plus it's unacceptable to have to wait nearly 40 mins or more to sample the final course of the evening. Sadly, we didn't think the Dining Room was worthy of a service tip.... nor was our experience worthy of five stars. Not sure if I would go back.