As promised I'm finishing off my review of the Whinfell Centerparcs. For the final part of the review I'm going to concentrate on the resteraunts on site (again apologies for the complete lack of photos - so unlike me!). All of the accomodation on site has good kitchen facilities so you don't need to eat out at all - we mostly ate at home (made the most of having a willing Mum to do all the cooking for me), but we did try out a couple of places.
Rajinder Pradesh - this is an upmarket indian resteraunt, with the option to either takeaway or eat in. Mark & I ate here on the Wednesday night (it was his compensation for having to suffer the Salsa class with me) and I can heartily reccomend it. The portions are on the large side so unless you have a really big appetite I wouldn't reccomend going for a starter - we just had a couple of poppadums. I had the chicken shishlak which was a sizzling chicken tikka dish served with a salad and yoghurt dressing - very delicious! We shared a rice, naan and a gobi aloo saag - again all very nice. Mark had a lamb curry (sorry I can't remember which)which I tried a bit of and again I'd give it a big thumbs up.
The only thing I would say about eating out at Centreparcs is that as it's very much a family resort the peak time for eating seems to be between 7-9 as many people bring their children with them (but I can reccomend the luxury of bringing the grandparents to babysit). As a result of this, most places seem to be dead after 9pm, so if you do book yourself a baby sitter don't get too excited at the thought of a wild night out!
The other place we ate was the Cafe Rouge in the Village Centre. This was pretty much the same as any other Cafe Rouge you'd find on the high street and the staff were very friendly and helpful. Most of us had the special which was a pork fillet in a calvados sauce with mash - very yummy, but I didn't realise it came without any vegetables so I would have ordered some on the side had I known.
Other places we visited but didn't eat in were the Lakeside Pub, Sportsbar and the Rock Cafe. I was less impressed by. The Lakeside pub was rather brightly lit so lacked atmosphere and the food that I saw by the bar looked rather unappetising pre-prepared frozen stuff kept hot under lamps. They did have a better selection of beer here than in the sportsbar however. The sportsbar is quite popular, but I was put off by the rather loud TV's blaring out sport - I guess this is some people's idea of entertainment but I find it a bit of a turn off myself. The Rock Cafe is a kind of Hard Rock Cafe/TGI Fridays type of place. We only had a beer in here so I can't really comment much on it. They have a longish cocktail list, but again the place was fairly empty by 9pm.
Other places on site we didn't visit were Bella Italia and Cafe Fresh in the Village Centre. Yuzen (a Chinese/Thai resteraunt) in the Sports Plaza. Also there are two Starbucks that were in the process of being built whilst we were there due to open shortly.
Oh and there's also a supermarket in the Village Centre for provisions with a nice fresh bakery.
Overall I would definately reccomend it to anyone looking for a family holiday, though it can be quite pricey if you don't go out of season like we did. There are many great activities to do, but be careful not to overbook yourself or you'll end up running round like a mad thing and after all holidays are meant for relaxing! If possible I'd reccomend bringing extra familiy such as the grandparents along to do a bit of babysitting - this will allow you time to do activities together and to get out occasionally in the evenings. I know we will definately be going again some time.
