16/08 - The Moonee Tavern’s sad demise since ownership changed!
Once a great place to meet and eat, with great pub food, all has changed with “the Tavern”, now the Moonee Beach Hotel under new ownership. The new owners also own the Sawtell and Toormina Hotels.
We used to go to the then Tavern regularly for weekend lunches and have lunch outside enjoying good food, company, service and a great and varied menu, with excellent pizzas.
The grandkids also loved the playground, now under reconstruction of sorts.
But… as things go, the new owners have made changes. The food menu is the big let down, as well as the quality. The pizzas are not as good, the old favs calamari and chips gone, many new meals I cannot quickly recall revamped and more greasy and less appetising, and no way tempting or delicious.
Chatting with others this week, I have heard the same comments. It’s not a case of “let’s find something to knock”, it’s more of a feeling of how things have changed - downhill.
The staff meanwhile are as always friendly!
But when you get home from a pub lunch and don’t feel happy about the choices and what you eventually “endured and ate”, one realises that it’s no way the same. Let alone some stomach upsets later from the not as great food.
Time to move on!
The “just up the road” family weekend pub lunch has to be somewhere else now and disappointingly too!
Maybe one day the Hotel will look back and realise the food of the past “brought in many happy customers” and make amends.
Till then, it’s time to find a new venue for the family, even if it means a drive to Woolgoolga or even into Coffs Harbour. Forget the local and enjoy weekend food again - elsewhere!