Luxury Hotels in Ningbo

Top in terms of location, facilities, staff friendliness and room standards. Zero stars for the quality of the dining experience, I'm afraid. Mediocre local dishes hopelessly overpriced and way below average by Ningbonese standards. Could have gone to Hanling village down the road or a bit further into Yinzhou for the same or similar dishes at a tenth of the price (and better quality). We felt it was quite an insult and if it hadn't been rather late and we hadn't been starving, we would have gotten up again and jumped in a Didi. My workplace canteen offers similar local dishes at less than 10 kuai/dish (ok, not a valid comparison, I must admit, but even the most expensive local restos don't charge more than 50 kuai either and provide bigger size portions and tastier). The portions were tiny and starters were priced on average at 100+ kuai while the mains, the size of starters, were on average 220+ kuai. Hardly reasonable for some seasonal veggies and 10 tiny rubbery beef cubes. The white wine hadn't been cooled (happens all the time but kinda unexpected if you pay 4,000 kuai a night for a resort in one of Ningbo's prime locations) and it was a cheap bottle priced at nearly 80 kuai a glass. Having stayed in a variety of luxury lakeside venues across Zhejiang over the years, we were pretty taken aback. For me it was the worst value for money food experience during my entire time in China. We loved our suite, the fitness facilities as well as the architecture of the entire resort though. The service was pretty professional and friendly even though hardly anyone speaks English which is surprising given that this place is regularly frequented by non-Chinese speakers from the local areas nearby (and we saw plenty of those for lunch). Also, in comparison to similar properties across Ningbo and Zhejiang, the breakfast was the worst also. Never mind the continental and English style brekkies (sometimes difficult to get right, we get that), even the Chinese dishes were mediocre (such as the soups, fried items etc) which was surprising. Should we return (we practically live down the road), we'll not spend a single penny on food in this place.