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Food At The Midtown Grill at Berlin Marriott. Best and Worst

One of the things about travelling alone is that meals in the hotel are the easiest option so tend to be by default. 

Berlin Marriott is a nice hotel. Fairly central and as one might expect from a Marriott. The first night I arrived fairly late and in reality wanted to sit in the bar and have a beer and a burger. Sadly this was not possible on two curious counts. Firstly the bar is not really a bar but the foyer of the hotel and secondly they served no food. 

The Midtown Grill is the hotel restaurant and I was put off entering last time because the handwritten special board indicated some steak item with something else in German for 70 euros. This time I had little choice. 

The ambience in the restaurant is acceptable but hardly special. The service was variable from very helpful to complete indifference. Curious. The first night I asked them for a Burger and beer without even seeing the menu. It came and was delicious . Arguably 15 euros for the burger was a bargain. 

The food was nicely presented and bread was served free of charge as a starter. I was even more impressed when the second night I read the menu and saw that burgers were not even on the menu. 
The second night I was feeling a little vegetable deficient and had Caesar salad with chicken. Again free bread emerged. 

The Caesar salad was superb and not small and again a bargain for 14 euros. The chicken though was maybe less good. The portion strangely was too large and the meat was tasteless and probably could have done with another 5 minutes grilling

. As a side dish though I decided to have Mac and Cheese.  In London I have had this a few times instead of chips and it works well. Here it was a disaster . In all honesty I cannot a worse restaurant dish ever. The portion was ridiculously large for 5 euros. The pasta was Penne not macaroni. The sauce at the bottom of the dish was water with a taste and consistency of what I imagine dishwater might taste like and worse contained enough salt to give one an overdose. There was a small amount of grilled cheese on the top. Simply inedible. In all fairness I told the waiter and he was very apologetic and said he told the chef. Ok. Five euros. No big deal. The happy ending though was the best baked cheesecake maybe ever given free of charge. It came with redcurrants, blackberries, blueberries and a cumquat. 
So would I return here? Sure if on business but not if on leisure. The prices on the menu for the steaks etc were huge. At those prices maybe I might need a restaurant with more ambience. Where a lot of hotels fall down with their restaurants is that they are simply too large and designed mostly for breakfasts or huge parties . A suggestion. Make a design change. Enable the restaurant to be partitioned off meaning that with perhaps 20 guests dining  the room looks a little cosier.