The Cooma Hotel — Restaurant in Cooma

I haven't been here for 4 years. You can find my first review from 4 years ago, which was glowing. The first impressions were not good. The menus are old and dirty... laminated A4 pages with, you know, the worn laminated pouch now completely useless and peeling off. Not a good start.

But, wait, there's more, and it gets better...

Customer service: Very impressive. The staff here are very friendly and smiling. Eager for a chat and a laugh. I really enjoyed their jovial and light hearted approach. Nice!

Menus: No! Just NO. Re-print your menus. There is no excuse for grubby menus. Printers are cheap and you could print these out weekly on card paper to keep them good looking and slylish. This is where you lost half a star.

Food: VERY good! I had the steak and Recky had the Barramundi and prawns. Barramundi & prawns: Recky worked for 12 years in fish retail and it is hard to please him. He was VERY happy with the fish and prawns. Cooked perfectly he said. Very nice. Fries: Now this is what I call fries. They were the shoestring (french fries) and they were hot and crunchy. EXACTLY how they should be. Well done this was perfect and I don't remember the last time I had such good fries. Steak: I asked for rare. I even told the waitress not to overcook it as I was going to do a review. This is where you lost another half a star. It was medium rare. But it was a very nice cut of meat and I was overall very happy with it. I also appreciated a healthy serve of salad. Usually, pubs give you a small smattering of salad. This was the opposite: a big quantity with nice dressing. Thank you, it's nice to balance the heavy meat/fries with good salad.

Atmosphere: Nothing special, just a good pub. It wasn't busy and the bar tender said it would get busy later. I enjoyed the quiet dinner without loud music, but that's just my preference.

Cleanliness: It was clean, very clean. Tables were not sticky. Cutlery and glasses were clean. The bathrooms were nice as well, and not too messy considering that it is a pub/hotel and not a fine dining restaurant. Well done here.

Overall: Very very nice. I would come back and have already recommended it to friends. Just get your menu's cleaned up (it's not hard nor expensive and makes a big difference). It's nice to see that many others agree, as they have many 4 and 5 star reviews and they deserve them.

See...

I've been coming here for over a year to place my weekly Keno bet, I usually spend $50 - $100 each time. But today I decided to get a drink as well and the old lady at the bar was just flat out rude.

First I had to wait for her to finish her casual conversation with another customer, fair enough. But when she finally did decide to serve me, in mid service, she stops and decides to stop and give priority service to another local that had just approached the bar. I walked out at that point, and I wont be coming back.

Awful service.

Update: To respond to the owner below, this occurred on the 8th of February at exactly 4:35pm. I know this because I still have the receipt for the $70 Keno ticket I purchased. Either way, I won't be returning so I don't really care if you investigate. But I will suggest speaking to your staff about getting carried away with conversations with locals. It's off-putting for patrons and makes people feel unwelcome when they give locals priority service.

As for your comment, I would have apologised and already addressed this with your staff instead of acting like you cant find any evidence, pretty...

Never have I ever been met with such a rude manager. I was taken aback by his aggressive behavior. He was deliberately attempting to be intimidating, but instead showed his lack of basic human decency. Edited in response to the owners comment. My group did in fact walk into the pub with almost empty beer bottles, barely a dribble inside. We had no sooner picked where we would sit when we were approached with such aggressive behavior. We had walked over from the Alpine with the last of our drinks. Not wanting to leave discarded glass bottles outside the door we bought them inside, there is no crime in that and it certainly didn't breach any alcohol license violations. Empty bottles with barely a dribble are better collected by staff off the table and recycled than discarded elsewhere on the tables outside before entering which I would have considered rude. We weren't even given the time to order a drink before the owner jumped up and down in rage, embarrassing us and himself in...