The Mill — Restaurant in Pokolbin

We dined here based on its reputation. The food was good and presented well. The staff were friendly and the room was styled to look like a romantic wedding venue.

However, the $120 tasting menu was very overpriced for what you received. The 5 courses were very small and none of us left feeling full or that we had experienced true fine dining. The first dish of heirloom tomatoes was very basic, Mine were mostly green tomatoes and they lacked any flavour. The second dish was two standard sized scallops with a dressing that wasn't anything that stood out as special. The third dish was two prawns with different flavours. The garlic one overpowered the other. I wish they had just served the one flavour. The fourth dish was one beef rib. It had a soft curry flavour. The accompanying teaspoon of carrot puree was the best flavour of the night. Dessert was a dessertspoon of lemon curd with 4 tiny strawberry pieces and 2 wafers of meringue.

The $60 additional for the pairing wines was also disappointing. The wines were okay but not premium and with about 50-75 mls per glass, this equates to about $30 for each standard glass of wine. The bottles themselves were only priced around $60 on the menu. My husband was furious that between the 4 of us we were charged $240 for the equivalent of just over 2 bottles of wine. Value for money just wasn't there. We have eaten degustation meals many times and this is the first where we have walked away very disappointed. The young lady serving the pairing wines was friendly but had no idea about the wines and beyond being able to say it paired with seafood well.... really wasn't able to give us insight into the wines. The 5 dishes were explained but if you wish to charge fine dining prices then there should have been much more knowledge provided about where the food was sourced and the various reasons for each combination not just what we could read on the menu ourselves. Overall, we would not recommend the tasting menu based on the price charged.

There were not enough diners there to gauge whether the 2 or 3 course options were...

We arrived on time, a Tuesday night in late June ( as we decided to try out this restaurant at the last minute) as our other choices were booked out. The restaurant has a very good ambience( opened wood fireplace, spacious, very high ceiling, timber floor, white tablecloth, some nice plants and floor to almost ceiling glass windows all around with view to the bush ). The waiter was very cordial and welcoming. He guided us to our seats soon after our entry. It became very obvious that as a lone waiter for the night , looking after approximately 15 people , and may be another 8 people at the broken back bar on the other side of the complex , that he would be stretched to the limit. Watching him darting about made me feel a bit anxious , and we did not get our bread until 25 min after our arrival. The entrees arrived after another 30 min , and a similar period of time lapsed before the main courses showed up.We were exhausted from hunger at the beginning,and tiredness at the end of our meals. The menu provided choices of about 5 entrees , 5 main courses and 3 side dishes. It was a hard task to choose the right entrees and main courses, as the style of cooking and ingredient choices aspired to fuse the East and the West. The octopus with saffron aioli could be fresher, the wild boar tortellini with aubergine, goat cheese tasted strange and salty, the zucchini fettucce salad was over cooked ,and the slow cooked beef short ribs with hoisin sauce was confusing. In the end , in our opinion , this fusion would only created confusion. The best parts for the night was the bread , the butter and the red wine ( Thomas winery , wine by the glass for $12 ). The waiter, forever trying hard , asked us for some feedback . We tried to downplay our disappointment. Perhaps reading our body languages , he nicely offered us free deserts, which we declined, and he responded by not charging for the wine . Overall, it was not a night that we enjoyed . We hope that this review will help someone , and the whole situation...

My mother-in-law booked here for Christmas lunch, after having a fantastic experience last year. Having heard how good it was I was really looking forward to it but we all left very disappointed.

To start, we had requested an indoor table in advance expecting that it would be hot. When we arrived we were sat outside and so had to request to change tables, which the staff accommodated.

The new table that they allocated us appeared to be set correctly but we had to ask for napkins. No one came to take a drinks order. No menu was given. Apart from these minor and forgivable inconveniences, the ambience was just fine...

...then the waiter brought out the entrees. Keep in mind we had rung twice to confirm that there would be three vegetarian diners in our party, yet the waiter just bought out salmon. He seemed very surprised when we told him. Some time later he came out again with three vege dishes, a rather sad chopped up mushroom with basically guacamole only top.

After this the mains arrived, the vegetarian options being - no joke - a mushroom cut in half and fried. Admittedly, they were cooked pretty well, but for $140-ish dollars a head for food alone you'd expect more. The 'regular' mains were just OK, but again nothing special. Some limp steamed vegies were the sides.

Lastly, the rather bland Christmas pudding was served as dessert. It was OK, but again not what you'd expect for such an expensive lunch.

The head waitress must have twigged that we weren't satisfied and we politely explained that it was very much below the standard you'd expect, especially considering the excellent lunch had last year. She seemed to agree, yet nothing further was offered beyond some sympathetic nodding.

After this we won't be back, which is a shame given the nice location amongst the vineyards of Pokolbin/Cessnock.

The staff were generally polite if a little indifferent, so not entirely deserving of 1 star. However, the food was so poor considering the cost that I can't rate the...