Hunter River Hotel — Restaurant in Newcastle-Maitland

The first word that comes to mind for the Hunter River Hotel is .........WOW!

My daughter booked the venue for her daughter christening lunch and what a great choice.

When I walked in there was a lively young lady who happened to be cleaning plates off and a table and she turned, smiled and said hi. That is very usual to say the least!

Then I went to bar to order drinks and all the staff acknowledged me being there and were super helpful and smiling. I was lucky enough to be served by the same lady each time I went to the bar and she knew what I was after every time. The other staff were super nice and they all were very helpful and chatty.

The hotel was extremely busy with parties and every table in the place was booked but the staff never missed a beat and handled it like a dream and from what I could see without any stress and happy with each other.

We ordered the food, there was around 20 of us and the meals came out in an extremely timely manner, it didn't seem that we had to wait too long.

OMG, the food! It was incredible! Every dish was perfect and my steak was melt in your mouth delicious. There were plenty of Gluten Free options too.

Everyone in our group absolutely enjoyed their meal and there wasn't a single bite of anything left on their plates!

That is a huge testament to the chef team and the quality of the produce they use!

The venue itself was great, bright and inviting.

We travelled from Bathurst for the Christening and lunch and we will definitely be back to try more off the menu.

A HUGE thank you to all the staff for ensuring we had a wonderful...

Came in last Friday (six days ago now), I ordered an American type burger, two of my children ordered the kids cheeseburgers.

Come Saturday all three of us are sick and also my wife who had a few bites of the kids burger.

Wife’s fine by Sunday night, unfortunately I didn’t leave bed till Sunday night (fever, felt like my joints were welded together) two kids off school for Monday and Tuesday.

Here I am still off work and spraying the bowl on the following Thursday awaiting salmonella results.

Was it the cramped caravan they’re cooking in? Did I come in too close to end of prep and things were just over looked? I’m not too sure.

I will mention however that there is a five star review from my wife in this list from our family’s first visit and we have visited four times without issue prior to this occasion.

I wasn’t going to do this review, but after two days in bed and another four between the couch and bowl I feel very let down.

For those curious to know how we came to the realisation that it was the pub, every other day our family of six eats the same food and drinks from the same tap. The level in to which we have been sick was proportionate to the amount of burger meat in which we had consumed that night. While our four year old twins were completely unaffected after having the kids nuggets and chips.

Our family has had other unreviewed experiences at this business that would have rated highly, but at this point I don’t believe we...

Good food. We came here as a big group, so tried a variety of dishes. My partner had the fillet steak and myself the Curry of the day which in this case was a red Thai chicken curry with rice and Flatbread. We thought both were delicious, but the steak's Diane sauce was funky. It didn't taste like Diane at all and it had chunks (from Gravy powder?) In it, we didn't eat it. The curry was very flavourful but so spicy that it made my stomach hurt. I asked the waiter if it was very spicy, she said it is a bit but she also personally can't handle spice. Therefore I thought I'd very fine as I like some spice but I was mistaken 🤣 unfortunately I couldn't finish my plate as it made my stomach hurt too much at some point but the flavour was still great, the Flatbread was delicious. We also had Bruschetta, it was good but it was a bit dry. Would recommend a bit more vinegar or Balsamic glaze on it. The rest of the table tried burgers, pasta, risotto and salads. Everyone seemed pretty happy with their choices. We didn't have to wait long either, maybe 15 to 20 mins and most of the dishes (for 9 people) were ready at around the same time. We had 2 friends that rocked up a bit later and unfortunately the wait for their food was a bit outragoes. They only had one Burger and one pasta dish and they waited nearly a full hour. That wasn't nice. Except for that the food was nice and the prices also not too bad,...