Royal Oak Hotel Penola — Restaurant in Penola

We stayed there for one night in early June 2021. The accommodation in this place is reasonably priced with great values. The rooms, shared bathrooms and toilets were super clean and went beyond our expectations for rooms above a pub. We thought we were in a decent 3/4 star hotel in spite of lacking en-suite in the rooms. The heater was quite powerful to keep us warm at a winter night.

The beer garden looks amazing and so did the guest-only balcony.

There are few things that this place could really work on.

We got into a little bit trouble with keyholes (which appeared to be old or dated) and they need upgrades. The men’s toilets and bathrooms are a bit difficult to find. The women’s bathroom is much colder than the men’s bathroom due to women’s bathroom having a higher ceiling. The smoke of burning wet firewood at the fireplace downstairs in the pub fumigated our rooms for a little while.

My main purpose for this review is for the accommodation instead of the food. If I could post a 2nd review for this place regarding food, I would have only gave a 3 star.

The daily specials on the pub menu were a bit pricey. My sticky pork belly (A$24) was nicely done with a slightly smaller serving size than my expectations. The skin was slightly chewy rather than crunch, although it was still crispy. The pork meat was tender and juicy with a nice layer of fat under the crispy skin. The poached pear with vinegar really helped with the richness of the pork belly, and the creamy pumpkin purée was very nice.

My friend’s pan-fried salmon for A$38 was a bit much. I tasted the salmon and it was fairly blended and a bit fishy with couple slices of zucchini. The cauliflower purée...

We were expecting better after reading such a good dining experience. Well not really. Disappointing with dry Bao buns, my pork cutlet was average to say the least and my wifes steak was dry. This is a restaurant within the pub but our experience says it pub food quality. Nice waiter but I have never experienced a waiter bringing a quality bottle of wine to the table and just leaving it. I waited 5 min but he never returned to even open the bottle so I did so myself. The wine was lovely although being 40 % dearer than normal retail price. Yes good restaurants price this way but this is still a pub with high priced wine and average food. Sorry but it was below our expectations. Oh , part two of this review. We have waited almost 1 hour without any interaction with our waiter. We have half a bottle of wine yet to drink so we would like to see a desert menu to possibly spend another $30 on deserts. Sadly our waiter walked past, walked past and walked past 30 times without asking us how our dinner was or if we may like something else. We actually would but as the service and attention was so poor we thought not. We actually had to go to the public bar in order to pay our bill. Fine dining ( * Not) good service ( Not). Sorry , not...

Cost of living going up, dining out is a rare treat. So to go to this establishment and be treated badly by staff, be served cold food and very poor service is very disappointing. We had made a booking and it took 20 minutes for someone to bother to take our order. We watched others come in after us and there orders taken well before us. Then when they finally did, we had to chase the drink order down - they forgot to get it. Some food came out quickly. The rest of food came out over an hour later all mixed up. They were all main meals. When we mentioned that the food was cold we were snapped at and questioned by the staff. There was a manager on site and when we expressed our disappointment to him he just argued with us as he tried to justify our feedback as not important We also witnessed other patrons having a similar experience. Great location for a full faulty...