Royal Oak Hotel Penola in Penola

Great pub, beat in town

Amazing little gem.The food and service was great. Can recommend the Espresso Martinis and to dine on Curry night - yum!!

What a lovely old pub in Penola and the meal did not disappoint either

Lovely dining room - tables well spaced out. Food Lovely especially the stuff zucchini flowers- 😋yum! Had the beef cheeks perfectly cooked with great mashed potatoes- no room for dessert although it looked great!

This hotel has a great menu & wine list.,nice atmosphere., really good outdoor area. Pokies & Tab..A great place to take family or friends I highly recommend it for a great meal out.👌

Delicious hearty meals in a relaxed country pub. Slow cooked beef cheek was so tasty and super tender (melt in the mouth!). Prices were reasonable and it was very comfortable seated near the wood fire. Staff were very welcoming and the service was fast.

Nice meals, good service, and lovely atmosphere.

It’s a night out with my friend Sasha. We had a lovely dining out at Royal Oak. Dishes are fabulous yummy in our tummy. Great food presentation and the atmosphere is absolutely right. Staffs and services are utmost right. Talk about quality and cuisine, Royal Oak can satisfy and fulfill it all. I personally rate it overall with ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. We will be back soon for celebration.

Great food and friendly service. We will be back.

This pub was top notch. Food was unexpectedly good and not just your standard pub options on the menu. The beef cheek was the stand out for me, huge serve and the mustard mashed potato was awesome under it. Starters were all awesome too. Everything came out in a reasonable time and nice and hot. Staff were very friendly. Defiantly worth a visit if your in the area

Top pub in Penola!!..staff are great and congrats to the chef on the best beef cheeks I have ever eaten. Curry Barramundi a big winner as well!!

Just wow! Great spot and great menu to choose from

Couldn’t fault this pub. We enjoyed the Chicken Schnitzel and the Salmon last night so booked again for tonight. The Sirloin was perfect and Risotto was excellent. The young staff carried themselves very well and the whole place just motors along. The prices are quite reasonable and the quality is above pub standards so I wouldn’t hesitate to return when next in Penola. It would be advisable to book a table because each night the dining room has been full. Well done RoyalOak Hotel and a big thank to the lovely young staff who run it.

This pub is the best..staff so friendly and will do the best for you..meals beautiful and love the friendly atmosphere in the bar..20/10😊

Friendly and quick service, delicious and well proportioned pub fare.

Kids meal came out way before our starter even came out and was luke warm and not eaten. No access to toilets for our daughter other than through the front bar! Intimidating experience for a 13 year old girl. Starters.....scallops were 3 tiny sorry excuses for scallops, the Camembert had some rosemary stuck into it but certainly no flavour infused and 4 entire crackers!!!! Salmon was over cooked and dry, not eaten. Steak was full of gristle and over cooked. Potatoes were good though! Wine was good also! Would not come back again as I had lunch at the other pub in town and it was spectacular! Save your money and spend it at the Prince of Wales down the road.

Nice food. They have an extra little cellar with old and special wines. Definitely worth a look

Always visit the Royal Oak when in the Coonawarra - for a few pots and dinner. Under new ownership now and a few changes have been made which is great. Food was really good this year as a concerted effort has been made to shift away from typical pub food to a more culinary experience, which was terrific.

Good pub fare, good beer & wine selection; its where the locals go.

Went for lunch with friends. Everyone enjoyed their meals. GF and DF options on menu. Indoor or outdoor dining. Great wine list too.

Cosy Country style Pub, great meals.

Nice little pub, good food and a pleasant dining room area.

Great pub food and wine here.Service was great too.

Great meal. Quite busy but they work well as a team to look after the customers. Well played to Harry, the Queenslander and Carlton man !

They fitted us in for dinner without a reservation. So pleased they could! Meals were really good, service friendly and professional but still relaxed.

Lovely place, this pub has all of my favourite wines of the Coonawarra region. Food was classic pub food with some unexpected twists, deep fried Zucchini flowers are sooo tasty. Unsure about the art work they had on display, all the paintings are a little odd and quirky.

Great pub. Large dining room with very good menu

Food tasted nice but needed to be hotter. Some confusion over meals. Staff polite but not attentive.

Better than I expected. Nicely refurbished and maintained. Quality linens, comfortable bed, well presented. Shared facilities were spotless. Dinner in the restaurant was excellent. Self-service breakfast with plenty of options. Great staff attitude; easy going and service oriented. All in all easy to recommend.

We had a lovely meal, staff were very nice.

Terrible meal.Worst we had in the area. Frugal serve of seafood pasta - may be Chefs Special barely a childs serve - 2 prawns and a handful of mussels half sealed shut and had to be smashed or prised open. Swallowed broken shell is dangerous.- The burger was average, the meat unseasoned and boring topped with cheap cheese. the bread dry seemed stale and the chips were disgusting obviously dont know how to cook potatoes. They were dry shrivelled and many actually hollow probably from recooking over and over. Service was OK ...note to self ...not one member of staff asked if we enjoyed our meal......

Delicious and decent portions. Will be eating here again soon. The beer garden outdoor seating was especially nice.

Much room for improvement in service and food. Struggled to gain attention of restaurant wait staff to order, wines appeared to be stored incorrectly (reds heat affected?).Returned schnitzel as not parmigiana as ordered, so entire plate (including saladwas put under grill to melt cheese and incinerate the rest.Other meals were questionable (incomplete T-bone, lamb tagine was low on tagine but very high on couscous)Entrees and Seppelt Chardonnay were great, chicken schnitzel was monstrous.Disappointing result for wine offering in a renowned wine region but appears efforts are being made with wine fridge in main dining area.

What a lovely pub! Great food, great wine list, and so enjoyable sitting outside on a mild evening. Dumplings are delicious! Sticky date pudding was to die for! Filled with locals which says a lot.

Called in for pre dinner drinks. Nice staff. Quite, but I think this is due to the pandemic issues and I hope all the county towns get back to normal as soon as possible. Penola is a great town.

Thanks again to the wonderful staff at the Royal oak. We dined twice, my wife is coeliac. Wouldnt matter, they seriously pay attention to detail.

Enjoyed a great lunch out in the beer garden. Nice sitting under the trees on a hot day and garden is dog friendly (we travel with a dog). One of the best pub meals weve had. We shared salmon and crab springs rolls (on the specials boardand burger. The spring rolls were not all pastry and the filling was plentiful and tasty and the burger was delicious.

One of the best pub meals I have ever had

The staff are wonderful, the hotel itself is most Royal and the food and drink are excellent. Our lovely waiter wouldnt accept our offer of a tip tonight. We recommend the chicken curry, which is next-level good.

Terrible service! Slow service! Even though you are wearing masks, we know when you are smiling! Due to Covid 19 the dining rooms are restricted which means less clientele. Goodness knows how staff will cope with full capacity and no masks.

Our meals were great. Lovely barramundi fish and chips and salad and chicken schnitzel. Staff went out of their way. 👍👌

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 datedand 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$24was 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 tasted quite nice.

The very small piece of barramundi was incinerated on the outside and raw in the middle. The kale was supposed to be crispy but was also burnt. The meal was not enjoyable. Definitely not worth $38. No waitress came to see if the meal was acceptable yet the cashier expected a complaint to be raised. The burgers were ordinary. The trio of gelato was mainly mango and my husband doesnt like mango. The sticky date was not very sticky (more dates were requiredand the teaspoon of sauce was not sufficient.

We had dinner here Friday evening. Strongly suggest you book as it’s very popular and I can see why.The bar staff were so lovely in particular the female Manager. I was really impressed by the way she treated all the younger staff and the customers. Nothing was too much trouble. They were fully booked but she said we could order in the bar area.Now onto the food. Wow just wow! I’m a steak lover and she did recommend this. Scotch fillet with pepper sauce, cooked medium to perfection and such good value at $27!Beautiful salad and chips too. Hubby had a homemade pie type of thing that he loved also.The next night in Mount Gambier eating at The Barn was such a disappointment. Chewy tasteless over the top priced pub grub.Take me back to the Royal Oak any day.

We came here twice. We came for lunch and we found their menu extensive and they had lunch specials which were pretty good.But we came back the next day for dinner and we were disappointed. The menu was heavily reduced to basically Schnitzel, burgers and fish and chips. And the Schnitzel wasn’t great.They do have a couple of craft beers which was good but the food for dinner was very disappointing hence the 3 stars

While the food was good, the starter arrived after the main. The waitress was not aware that one steak was rare and the other medium-rare, so we each ended up with the wrong steak. Another person brought out the wrong wine (not what we had ordered).The experience was quite Fawlty Towers as the next table had a similar experience with their service.

Waited over 30 minutes for a drink that was only half full. For the servers to be rude and say that is how it is meant to look even though it was a mojito made with rum and apple cider. In addition, the food was very average aside from the ribs. While this place seems to have good reviews my experience was more than terrible, steer clear.Note* this is my first review ever I felt like I had to take time out of my day to write something negative that’s how bad my experience was.

We enjoyed a wonderful dinner at The Royal Oak last night. Our meals were delicious and generous. The dining room is a beautiful space and elegantly decorated. The staff were attentive without being intrusive, and knowledgeable. Would recommend.

Amazing food, portion size was big, and service was great!! Cant wait to go back and try more stuff!!We had the feed me menu, which included 5 courses, all very well balanced, and so fresh!The chef greeted us and served us our meals, and explained where the ingredients were sourced. All local, and they are also creating their own market garden! So so impressed!!

I’m calling it!!! Probably the best pub beer garden in the region!!!