The Boathouse Hotel Patonga — Restaurant in Patonga

Appears I’m unable to review each attendance so will number my visits. (Staying local so it’s the only place …….)

Try everything twice, but not this place……

1st Thursday, Trivia nights, it was a poor turnout, suspect it’s due to the food…… Don’t come hungry eat at home…… single portion of plain chips is $12. But they have Trivia night food special Surprise!!! Nachos, who knew not everyone can make nachos, we ordered both the minced beef and the vegetables. The most flavoursome part of the meal was expired salt, the nicest part was the crunchiness of the amount of salt needed to give it texture and flavour. $40 waste of time, money & effort.

Oh and if they change the keg / gas they will not take your drink to your table, even if you have kids even if you are eating, even if they are not busy even if you have asked them (two different people, apparently they are flat out busy, but they were not…… special shout out to the staff, guess due to its isolated location, don’t expect too much, maybe don’t expect anything.

2nd Thursday trivia night Low turnout few people, and 6 risotto pumpkin deep fried balls, and glass noodles vegetable stir fri, The stir fri was 50/50, not the vegetable noodle ratio but rather, noodle vegetable / oil ratio.. I had 1 mushroom 2 halves, however I am certain that it was illegal, as this mushroom was so small I mistook it for a slightly larger than usual Peppercorn….. it should also have been served in ramekin, not in a large bowl, such a waste, next time serve it in a ramekin, a small ramekin, like the one you get in a set of panna cotta deserts from supermarket, the 5 marble sized risotto pumpkin balls, could not tell that its pumpkin, could not tell that its risotto…… Left hungry poorer and dissatisfied and disappointed, again. Like Patonga, no I love Patonga just a shame this is the only place here …….. I’ve sincerely don’t like McDonald, however I’d rather have another portion of the worst McDonald’s that I’ve had than try another Thursday trivia food surprise special!!!

More fulfilling satisfaction to be had if you used the $40 to buy fish concert tickets or donate to Televangelists…..

Friday pizzas are nice but be prepared to wait (ask for a receipt, as you won’t get one, unless you ask) keep it for reference, so when your food finally comes use it to check the date, month or year, as it does take a quite a while. (Imagine having young hungry...

The Boathouse has been our favourite restaurant for the last couple of years, however in the last 3 months it has changed considerably. Since around the time of October 2023, it is very clear there has been a change in management, or business restructure, as everything has gone down hill, from the food, to the service, to the all over atmosphere.

The food has always been of a consistently high standard, with great presentation, good quality ingredients and a well thought out, coherent menu. Unfortunately, the food is of very low standard now, to the point where every dish is almost un edible, and certainly not worth the price tag. The food being served now I would only expect at a very low budget pub.

Also, the entire venue layout has also changed, and again not for the better. The main entrance has moved so that they can fit one more table, which seems silly because they have now lost the beautiful grand entrance they once had, that created a very warm welcome and set the ambience for the whole experience. You are now ushered around the side with a make shift barrier to walk past the toilets.

Moving onto the rest of restaurant, the menu boards have been changed as well. The design they have changed to, now look cheap and tacky. The entire restaurant is also very dirty. It was once very clean, but it is clear that there is no pride taken anymore in the overall appearance of the venue, as the tables and floors are all very dirty.

Last but not least, the staff are absolutely appalling now. The last visit we had (which was this evening) there were about 15 staff all under the age of 25 wondering around ignoring customers and talking amongst themselves. When we did finally get their attention, they had no customer service skills, and made the ordering experience very unpleasant. I felt like I was talking to a bratty teenager who had no right to be waiting on customers, at what is supposed to be a good quality restaurant.

I do hope this review has been read by the owners or management, as I really wish the Boathouse to return to its former glory.

But for now, that will be the last time we visit The Boathouse Patango. Which is very sad, because as I mentioned before, this was our regular ‘go to’ hot spot for years. Looks like we will have to find somewhere new.

I would advise others to not go here as you will only be...

First time I went and I’ll probably never go back. Lovely location, me and my friends booked for the bottomless brunch. Booking (and our arrival) at 12 on the dote. When we were seated at our table was a vague explanation about ordering our brunch package through the QR code. Okay no problem. 40mins goes by and we get the first half of food?! Mind you, these are all the cold items; salad, salmon tartare, burrata. Things that for a booking where they knew what was included could’ve basically been prepared prior to our arrival. Everything was okay, nothing special, no staff assigned to us so to ask for things like more bread was grabbing any staff member we could but anything we asked for too a long time to get. Another hour goes by and we get the last food, so 1:40pm (pizza, broccolini and arancini) the pizza was decent, broccolini was cooked perfectly and came with this spicy almond chilli dip which was really delicious. They were quicker at accomodating us when we mentioned one of us was GF. So they gave us GF bread and a whole GF pizza which was nice. The arancini were basically crumbed fried mush with no flavour. Not enough food overall (besides extra GF pizza) we left hungry. I’m not sure if this is a new establishment or if it’s just severally understaffed but my takeaway is it’s missing a lot of management structure. I am a restaurant manager, so unfortunately all I keep seeing were so many things needing to be improved if you’re going to keep repeat business. They staff you do have were lovely but not engaged cause of the rushing around chaos, I don’t think there were assigned sections so people were just clearing tables at random but no one engaged with us to see how our service was going, did we need anything etc. A really disappointing experience for a place with a lot...