Kookaburra Hotel — Restaurant in Victoria

I really wanted to like this experience more. Recommended by both my accommodation and the visiters centre as a candidate to celebrate an anniversary with comments like 'the best European restaurant in Halls gap' , we made a booking the day before despite reviews of negative experiences. A little apprehensive we were still excited to celebrate a special night with some delicious food and local wine. Upon arrival, a lovely young lady took us to our table and kindly told us the specials for the evening. Enticed by the lamb rack special (though bit dearer) and the sound of a lovely soup for a chilly night we thought we'd splurge a little. All was well as I ordered at the bar and another wonderful lady recommended a lovely local red. I was relieved and thought the night was going to be lovely, however not long after, an older lady whom looked alot like the lady in the painting on the wall came to advice us that she noticed we order two courses of food and lamb that was going to take 30mins to cook and given we were half an hour late, we won't be ready for the next booking the table was meant for. And that the next booking had booked earlier than us. I explained I made the booking for 6:30 which I arrived on the dot, but was responded with an annoyed no. The lady stayed by the table tapped her pen at her clipboard unimpressed. Not knowing what we should do, we apologied and asked if we needed to change our order. The lady was annoyed but let us stay and said she'll try to shuffle the tables and left us. Feeling quite unwelcome, but not quite sure what to do, we proceeded with our evening and tried our best to enjoy our food. The food was cooked well, lamb was soft and fish was tender served with plain boiled vegetables was nice (but the food experience in comparison to our meal the night before was just a bit disappointing and not what it was hyped up to be nor what I had expected, except for the fresh bread that came with the soup maybe, that had the perfect bread sound, texture and warmth). The local wine was lovely but seeing the lady constantly checking in my direction and at my eating progress made me too anxious to relax or finish my wine for the matter. Leaving the restaurant at 7:30 on the dot, I felt so disappointed at the evening. Maybe we misheard maybe we didn't but it didn't feel right to spend hard earned money to feel this way, I still don't understand the purpose of making a customer feel this way.. But each to there own. Thank you to the ladies that were kind to us, and to the boss lady we're sorry we inconvenienced you. Hope this is an isolated experience to us and a misunderstanding, as it's obvious that it's well loved by the...

After hearing good reviews of this place on the web and by locals while we were in Halls Gap we were excited to try it. Unfortunately, it did not live up to expectation. Their website advised the owners/chef were on leave, but the staff assured us the standard would be just as high as usual. The restaurant itself is cozy and has nice décor. We were seated on the edge of the noisy bar but on request they moved us to a quiet table down the other end of the restaurant. We ordered garlic bread and prawns for entrée, and chicken and kangaroo for mains. The garlic bread came out literally two minutes after we ordered it, and was clearly microwaved not baked. It tasted ok but was really soggy. Three minutes after that, our mains came out. But we still didn't have our prawn entrée or our drinks! I told the staff member who delivered our food we were not ready for it as we still didn't have drinks or entrée, but she didn't care or say anything and just walked off. The kangaroo was nice, but the chicken dry. Both meals, and in fact I think all main meals, come with steamed veggies. They were so bland it was unbelievable. How difficult is it to put some garlic or seasoning on the veggies? Tasted just like the ones you get from McCains in the frozen section. Drinks and prawns came out after we were almost finished our mains and by that stage we were extremely thirsty and had asked for them twice. We ordered a tiramisu to share, a coffee and hot chocolate. The tiramisu was not good. It had not been given adequate time to soak, so the coffee was all at the bottom, and there was too much of it, and there was not enough cheese to cream ratio, too creamy. The coffee was average, and the hot chocolate had hardly any chocolate so was like drinking warm milk. I must say I have never had that problem before, usually it's too much chocolate by the end. We went to the Views the previous night and it was excellent. 10/10. I am not sure what this place's problem is, whether it was due to the owners/chef being away, or if it is just that poorly organised normally. However we wouldn't recommend this place to anyone, there are plenty of nice restaurants in Halls Gap to bother...

After reading a number of reviews, we had been pre-warned about the possibility of having rude service at this establishment, so we were prepared.

The woman at the front didn’t say hello and immediately asked us whether we had a booking. I don’t believe she was trying to be rude by doing this, but I can see how it would come across rude to some people. I did see the same woman having friendly interactions with customers around the restaurant.

We were served by a young woman who was very lovely, but she seemed new and did not have any wine knowledge. However she was friendly and nice.

Had the prawn bisque for entree, which came with a slice of bread and butter (we had joked that it probably wouldn’t come with bread, as bread was listed as a side order on the menu - also having read about how people were shocked to have to pay an extra $3 for Parmesan with their pasta, perhaps Parmesan is hard to come by around here?! :-s :-p ), so we were pleasantly surprised. The prawn bisque was AMAZING! Such a strong prawn flavour, obviously made with real prawn heads.

The barramundi was nice and tasty, came with vegetables.

I had opted for the duckling, which took almost an hour to come out, but they did warn us that it took a while to cook so we expected it. It was also tasty, the skin was nice and not soggy, and it came with vegetables.

My only qualm was that as the booking was only for an hour and a half, by time we had ordered our food and waited for the long cooking time of the duckling, we had a staff member come up to us to advise us that it was almost the end of our sitting (cpl mins to go).

I had not even finished the duck and we still had wine in the bottle. So we ended up leaving with food still on my plate. At least they allowed us to take the bottle of wine with us.

I know they must have had bookings after ours to seat, but if anyone is considering ordering the duck, either eat fast or don’t even think about having any dessert (I had wanted to try the crepes,...