Foster Exchange Hotel — Restaurant in Victoria

After a long day on the road, my friends and I pulled into Foster for dinner. Not being country folk, we were unaware of the somewhat early closing times of most establishments in such sized towns and we arrived to find that indeed nearly all had closed for the evening.

Thankfully, the Exchange Hotel was still open and we headed on in for a feed, but alas, we soon discovered that the kitchen has closed just half an hour earlier. All they could offer us was their desserts menu. Taking pity on us naive city folk, the manager then proceeded to call another establishment to see if they might still be open by chance. It appeared luck was not with us however, as this other place had also closed not 5 minutes prior.

As we gloomily considered our options of bar snacks or sweets for dinner, the manager disappeared into the kitchen for a bit (which was in the process of being cleaned) and then reemerged to say, "Ok, we can do Garlic Bread, Spinach and Ricotta Cannelloni or Lasagne, but there'll be no salad." "I can make salad!" one of the bar staff chimed in.

We were ecstatic! We couldn't believe our ears. Moments ago we had all but resigned to eating Apple Crumble with a side of salted peanuts for dinner, and now we were being offered a full meal. What's more, one of our troop is a vego and whilst she was so famished that she would have been willing to hang up her vego boots and sink her teeth into some meat just to belay her hunger, the Cannelloni suited her just fine.

The food surpassed pub grub standards, and the staff checked up on us several times to check whether the lasagne was hot enough. All in all it was a terrific dining experience, and I would easily recommend this hotel, based on their truly hospitable...

BISTRO MEAL: Our group came in from the cold having walked there with locals, to a toasty warm bistro bursting with diners. We were greeted promptly and it was no bother finding us a table to accommodate us. Dinner at the pub wasn’t planned, so we hadn’t booked 🙃 Menu was bigger than I had expected, and everyone took a while to decide what they wanted as there were so many options; including a Specials Board which was strangely only located in the next room.

The table enjoyed their food, with several of us ordering the same thing. Most meals were generous in size, especially pub favourites like the Parma. While the Meatlovers pizza was also delicious, its small size for the hefty price of $25 was a bit of a shock! However, in saying that, it definitely appeared to have ‘real’ meat on it… not like when all the meat is cubed shaped 😄

A huge disappointment was hearing two of the alcoholic drinks tasted awful. Like, proper awful and seemingly missing the alcohol 🤨

Had a giggle and thought I’d stepped back in time when I spotted the resin dunny seat 😂

Service overall was fast...

Today, i.e. Saturday 10th of December, 22, @ 5.30 pm, went for dinner with my husband & a friend. I went in first and asked for a table for 3. The lady refused my request and told me that all tables were booked. My husband was in the toilet, and our friend was quite a distance away from me. Along came our friend and asked for a table, the lady without hesitation allotted him a table without booking, not aware that I was his friend. I was shocked at the discrimination that was shown by this women. She refused me because I am Indian and coloured. This is racism. My husband and his friend are Australians. Anyway, we sat there for more than an hour and to our surprise, 12 tables were still empty. Very shocking and a disgrace . We ordered for grilled fish , a full plate had two tiny...