Chisholm’s Restaurant — Restaurant in New South Wales

The 1-star minimum that Google requires me to award I will allocate as follows: 0.5 star for the high ceiling in the room, and 0.5 star for providing me with a story that I can tell at dinner parties for years to come of what it is actually like to experience a 2.2 Google star rated restaurant.

Some might immediately ask, why would anyone willingly go to a 2.2 Google star rated restaurant (where in this case by far the most prevalent customer rating is 1 star). The only reason for our group attending was that if we wanted to get tickets for the cave and session we wanted, it was a pre-requisite to eat at Chisolm's! Unbelievable, but true. Caves House management might want to Google “ACCC Third Line Forcing” and read up on the laws on this. The fact that the nearest alternate restaurant is a 30-minute drive away you would think should already be sufficient to force enough trade through Chisolm's miserable mill of indifference. But it seems not – despite being the only restaurant within a half hour drive, they STILL have to force people to eat there if they want to see the caves.

Management at the restaurant is obviously non-existent (as evidenced by the absolute preponderance of woeful reviews here, plus zero responses from Chisolm's), but I am surprised the management of Caves House itself is apparently also uninterested, as this pitiful restaurant will also pull down the overall experience of guests staying in the hotel. But alas, I see Caves House also have some pretty mixed reviews themselves so I guess the indifference is endemic.

We ended up having to walk out half-way through and actually making the 30-minute drive to Oberon as it was obvious that this would be quicker than waiting for anyone to produce anything resembling what we ordered. This includes their “vegan” option dropped by the surly waitress on the table containing cheese and bacon, then arguing with the vegans that it what was they ordered (despite them saying to multiple staff multiple times that they were vegan, and it NOT being what they ordered). On the walk out, a couple at another table stopped us to offer their sympathy as they too had just had an argument with the wait staff who were obviously more in the mood to fight than provide actual service to anyone that night.

The eventual cave tour the next day was excellent (as always), but unfortunately still not good enough to remove the foul taste left in our mouth (literally and figuratively) from the night before. If the cave website forces you to eat at Chisolm's in order to see a cave, I suggest giving the whole sorry...

!! BUYER BEWARE MUST READ BEFORE DINNING !!

I'm not sure were to begin, the restaurant promises a "fine dining" experiance in the grand dining hall, tall ceilings, ornate columns, white tablecloths,waiters and bar staff dressed in button up shirts and silverware. There's even a piano in the middle of the room were we enjoyed a woman playing on a saturday night. So after being handed a big purple fold out menu with white printed sheets inside I decided to have the (char grilled 300gm sirloin with parsley potato rosti with steam vegetable and spicy onion rings) the steak was terrible I asked for rare it came out barely medium the rosti was just a Patti of lumpy potato that had been grilled and the onion rings were way overcooked almost burnt and to top it off for a $32.50 steak they served a packet pepper sause! Can you believe that! So I asked my partner who had the (char grilled pork cutlet with mash potato, honey sesame carrots and onion marmalade) if her meal was nice? She said no I tried it the pork was way way way! Overcooked it was like a dry piece of wood! And the burnt onion marmalade that was slapped over everything put a bitterness to the dish that was quite unpleasant !!! No wonder the place was only ever a quarter full !!!! Even the kids meal that we ordered for my son fish & chips $17.50 and frozen fish!!!! Unbielevable! Even after that I still always will try a place twice just to make sure so we went back the next night I ordered the chicken parmigiana and it was almost frozen inside! So I complained and said I'm sorry I cant eat this they apologised and made me a new one asap unfortunately the second one that came out was also cold! I gave up! terrible...

I was apprehensive about this restaurant at first due to the bad reviews that were given so far. However, my worries were unfounded and to my surprise, the restaurant was far better than what others make it out to be.

The service was great and the waitress was friendly and attentive to our requests. She even remembered us when we went back again two days later for dinner, which was a pretty nice touch.

Over the two meals, we ordered 6 different dishes. Glazed pork belly with kaffir lime rice, Pan-seared scallops with sweet potato mash, basil tomato salsa, Braised lamb shank with creamy mash and ratatouille, Char grilled 300 gram beef sirloin with parsley potato rosti, House made vegetable curry and Fettucine marinara, prawns, mussels, scallops and barramundi.

The food was better than expected and the prices were pretty reasonable for the amount of food we get. The lamb shank and beef were served in big hearty portions and tasted pretty good as well. The scallops were nicely seared with slight browning on the surfaces and went well with the refreshing tomato salsa.

The house made vegetable curry was surprisingly tasty as well, which we did not expect from a place which doesn't specialise in curry. The fettucine marinara was huge with a generous amount of barramundi and seafood in it. It's not fantastic but was decent enough for me to finish it. Of course, don't compare the quality with those you can find in Italian speciality...