Date Night at Malmaison Birmingham!

As my regular reader(s) know, I love a good date night. To be honest, I'm pretty exhausted by the time 7pm rolls around, but sometimes it pays to be active and make yourself go out, even though you have to put perky up eyedrops in your tired eyes and have a cold shower to get the adrenaline going again.  Hubby and I try to go out at least once a month, generally we like to go away for a night if we can, or go for a meal in a local restaurant. As we don't go out very often, we generally splash out a bit when we do, starting with cocktails and generally finishing with a lovely port. We like wine and have been on quite a few wine tasting holidays, before children that is, happy days....

Anyway, back to our date night. A few days ago we took the opportunity to leave the little terrors ones with their doting grandparents whilst we had a well earned night away, I only ever stay in really nice hotels these days (don't like wasting opportunities) and so Malmaison in Birmingham was an obvious choice. This particular Malmaison is right on the edge of the lovely Mailbox shopping centre (I didn't realise this until 5.55pm so sadly had no time to look around anywhere) and as soon as I walked in I could already hear a buzz of noise from the cocktail bar above (a good sign) and after a smooth check in, we found our way to our room. I did have a rather confusing conversation with one of the Malmaison staff that went something like this (my husband was just parking our car).
Staff member: can I just take a swipe of your card then he will pay.
Me: who is he?
Staff member: the one you talked about.
Me: did I? Am I meeting someone?
Staff member (looking totally confused): Yes you said you were, he can pay at the end if you want?
Me: The manager?

It went on in this way for a while until my husband appeared. I think by this point the member of staff thought I was meeting a complete stranger for a night in a hotel together! The reason I was confused was because I was reviewing Malmaison and sometimes when I do reviews the Manager likes to come over for a little chat...

Anyway, here are some piccies of our room and the hotel in general...

The bag on the bed.

The room was lovely and very spacious. Every Malmaison is a bit gothicy so I loved the velvet curtains (more importantly these serve as blackout curtains, ESSENTIAL for poor sleepless me).

Me, yes, dressed up.

I'm very obsessed by my Topshop ruched pencil skirt at the moment, but I also wanted to get something new for my night out, so I popped into Oasis and grabbed this lovely top, perfect for tucking in with a wide elasticated belt.

We decided to go out a bit earlier than normal so at 7pm we headed down to the cocktail lounge with full intention of having one then going to another bar in the Mailbox, we never made it out of the bar....I had a Cosmopolitan (predictable) while hubby had some whiskey cocktails.

Hubby with his "Old Fashioned"

The meal itself was more like an event, it really was. The staff were amazing and really looked after us. They were really knowledgeable about the hotel chain and the food too. We were really impressed with the Sommelier who seemed to know everything about wine and even let us try a really rare Croatian red which my hubby loved. 

For my starter I had some lovely fried scallops and squid with dip. It was amazing. That is all I can say.

Frito Misto

Each course was paired lovingly with a glass of wine from our friend the Sommelier (we tried to impress him with our wine knowledge, not sure it worked).

Wine matched to our starters

For my main course I had Monkfish with a green thai sauce. The sauce was lovely though the Monkfish was ever so slightly dry, though I appreciate that Monkfish is pretty hard to get right. Hubby had a lovely lamb dish which was perfectly pink...

When dessert came around I was excited as I had been watching the cheese cart being pushed around for some time. There really was no other option.

Amazing Cheese

Hubby's Creme Brulee

I was really full by this time, but the cheese was so amazing I had to give it a try. Luckily we had some amazing dessert wine paired with our choices including a glass of port that really brought out the flavours in the cheeses. 

Dessert Wines

I'd like to think that by this time I wasn't ranting about Canadian dessert wines but I think I was.

We had an amazing evening and were looked after superbly by the Malmaison staff. We slept soundly considering it was a city centre hotel and the next morning managed to try some breakfast (it was really busy in there) which was as you would expect from a great hotel like Malmaison...

Healthy Start

We had a great time and I'd like to thank the amazing Malmaison staff for really looking after us and making our stay restful and memorable. We will definitely be back soon.

Malmaison offered us a discount on their normal rate for the purpose of this review though opinions are all my own and are my true thoughts!