프레리 호텔 파라칠나

Absolutely spectacular! So good we went back 2 days later! Great use of local ingredients. Stunning food. Exceptional beer! This pub could get away with being above average and still do reasonable business….but it is up there with any high quality food in Adelaide or Melbourne and the setting is second to none! Hats off! We’ll be back.

Destination outback pub … but when you get here the car park is full of cars and the pub is weirdly gastro … mechanise shop and shiny beer brew set up (although I read they don’t actually brew their beer 🤷‍♂️). Still, the drive here is great and the building is fantastic. The food is where we were let down. We ordered: - haloumi … not exactly an outback classic but it was great. Highlight of our food. - kangaroo tail … in a sweet and sour sauce … very tasty but too sweet and a bit 🤷‍♂️ - feral mixed grill …. This is the house specialty … and pretty much why we drove there. I’m very sad to say … give it a miss. It’s small and expensive and not good. The kangaroo is delicious but two tiny tiny tiny pieces. The emu rissole is nice but dry and nothing says “emu”. The camel sausage is just five spice. With a couple of glasses of wine $160. Would I go again? Yes if it was at the end of a drive. No if it was the point of the drive. Either way I wouldn’t order the fmg again which is very disappointing to say.

We stayed here overnight, the staff were so friendly. In fact everyone was super friendly. The room was big and the bed really comfortable and warm. The beers were great and the meals delicious. Keep a look out for the secret drawer, with many great stories.

What a beautiful lunch experience. Food, beers brewed on site and South Australian wines were all excellent. Staff welcoming and helpful. The hotel has been lovingly renovated and the long table where we ate is a great spot. Artwork in all the eating spaces adds great ambience. So worth the effort getting here for the experience.

Yes it costs a bit. Yes it is exceptional. The food is amazing. Thank you from the one of us that is a vegetarian. The space is wonderful. Like a Tardis- a classic outback pub from the outside and an aesthetic joy from the inside. We absolutely loved the fossils nearby. Do the tour. No words can capture what touching the impression of a soft bodied multi celled organism from 550 million years ago in granite like rock is like. Til you do it. Do it! We also loved Blinman as a day tour - especially the mine tour and for the scenic drive in and out ..( Wadna crafts is worth a mention to visit ). Sunsets blood red turning soft twilight - WOW!

We really enjoyed our two nights at the Prairie Hotel, having only been lunch visitors previously. We wouldn’t hesitate to go again or to recommend others do the same, but it’s no ‘budget motel’ so the comments that follow are proffered with that in mind as it wasn’t quite 11/10 for the price paid! We thought the decor/design of the rooms and common areas was lovely and very well suited to the environment BUT we were pretty amazed by the ‘dear old’ bathrooms that are very much in need of renovation as they are stuck in the 1990s….the hairdryer mounted on the wall was almost stuck in the 70s! Definitely bring your own!! With all the talk of the great new renovations that have occurred, we were somewhat surprised that it wasn’t anything to do with the rooms themselves, just really the front bar etc. The bathrooms don’t look ‘rustic’; they just look unsatisfactory for the higher end boutique outback retreat that Prairie is striving to be. Our room was very spacious and comfortable though and we had no qualms other than that bathroom aspect…except maybe that the key locks are impossible to jiggle!! It’s a unique place to stay now that it isn’t open to other guests in the evening for meals unless you are accommodation guests, so when you sit on the verandah for sunset drinks you really feel it’s YOUR Prairie Hotel, which is so so nice. Also nice are the staff - in fact wonderfully enthusiastic and engaging and chatty too, if that’s what you seek. Food wise, we felt mixed. The evening snacks in the bar before you move in for dinner are fantastic - exactly the fun, unique and imaginative morsels that slot in with the ‘feral food’ attraction of the place. Amazing emu pate, kangaroo tartare, camel (instead of duck) pancakes etc etc. All sooooo DE-LISH!! But we questioned whether it was really good enough not to have any choice at all for your included entree, main and dessert. The servings were plentiful and quality enough, and we do understand the cost model rationale for serving a set menu to everyone, BUT even a choice between two main course options, or offering a cheese choice instead of sweets (e.g. quandong pudding and rum baba desserts were just too heavy for us) would have been appreciated when dining at a hotel that is pitching itself as a foodie destination. The beetroot entree one night was really beautiful though. Oddly, we were brought warm plates so that we could share the dishes, but they came out so far ahead of the food that they’d gone cold by the time we ate, rendering the heating useless! Breakfast was perfect. Just the right amount, and wonderful coffee! Do yourself a favour and take a walk along the railway line to see sunrise on the range before brekkie…..ahhh the Aussie bush! It’s a real treat to experience it as guests of the Prairie Hotel.