Royal Mail Hotel Ph: (03) 5577 2241 ; Glenelg Hwy, DUNKELD 3294 www.royalmail.com.au Modern Australian, $$$ Open Dinner Wed-Sun 6.30pm-8.30pm, Closed Christmas Day; Licensed; AE MC V EFT, Seats inside 40, Outside seats, Private rooms 35, 150 Chef Dan Hunter (21-9-11) Owner Dunkeld Pastoral Company (11-10-10)

Mietta's Review
In an absolutely beautiful location with terrific views of the Grampians, this renovated hotel is serving a modern mixed menu to its many fans. The wine list is very serious indeed, with the extensive selection separated by state, and in the French section, region. There is also accommodation available, and in 2001 a Conference Centre, to hold 150 people, was added. Excellent wine list.

Other published opinions

Gourmet Traveller 2012 Australian Restaurant Guide "With its beautifully crafted, brilliantly conceived, locally focused degustation dining experience. The Royal Mail is one of the country's must-do culinary pilgrimages. The improved but still prosaic dining room keeps first impressions muted, but excellent staff and a huge, eye-wateringly good wine list quickly raise expectations"

Age Good Food Guide 2012

Age Good Food Guide 2012 Score: 18/20, 3 Hats

Age Good Food Guide 2011 Score: 17.5/20, Two Hats

Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide 2011

Gourmet Traveller 2011 Australian Restaurant Guide Score: ** "The three-and-a-half-hour drive from Melbourne to the Royal Mail Hotel requires commitment, but Dan Hunter fully honours it with his skilful, intricate and always beautiful food. Expectations may be rattled by the disappointingly utilitarian main restaurant space, but once the wine list - extensive and with a knee-weakening French selection lands with a reassuring thump and the team of calm, personable floor staff set you on your 10-course path, any thoughts about decor vanish"

Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide 2010

Gourmet Traveller 2010 Australian Restaurant Guide "Dunkeld, population barely 450, seems at first an unlikely site for culinary pilgrimage, its sole, unprepossessing hotel even more so. The restaurant dining room, adjoining a pub bistro and public bar beyond that, promises little"

The Australian A List, 50 Great Australian Restaurants, John Lethlean, Necia Wilden, 5-09-09 "They stack hay around Dunkeld, a farming town in the Southern Grampians, a little differently from Spain's Basque country"

Age Larissa Dubecki, 6-10-2009 Score: 17.5/20

Age Good Food Guide 2009 Score: 16.5/20, Two Hats "16.5/20 9 12

Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide 2009

Gourmet Traveller 2009 Australian Restaurant Guide Score: ** "It takes just one bite of Dan Hunter's calamari - micro-scored and garlicky, with ginger and squid ink rice 'cake' and a dehydrated squid ink 'wafer' - to appreciate the remarkable substance to his radical style"

Herald Sun Bob Hart, 28-06-08 "Melbourne QC, businessman and lover of the finer things Allan Myers cared deeply: he invested money and dreams, a mountain of each, in the town in which, as a son of the locar butcher, he had grown up. ... He then installed one of the most accomplished young chefs Australia has produced - Dan Hunter, originally from Bairnsdale, who had just spent two years at Mugaritz in Spain, one of the world's best restaurants - to shape food operations and mastermind the hotel's signature restaurant."

Age John Lethlean

Herald Sun Dining Out, Stphen Downes, 20-11-07 Score: 14/20 "The Royal Mail's wine list A is one of Victoria's best. It has a brilliant and long choice, comprehensive grape selection and an excellent range of prices. And though food and wine are good to very much better, servings are small and prices are high. The ambience is as interesting as a Connex timetable and the pace of meals can be very slow."

Age Good Food Guide 2008 Score: 14/20

Gourmet Traveller 2008 Australian Restaurant Guide "The term 'country pub' doesn't cut it when describing Dunkeld's main watering hole with its incredible Grampians backdrop"

Age Good Food Guide 2006 score 13/20

Gourmet Traveller 2006 restaurant guide "Mount Sturgeon, southern sentinel ofthe Grampians, looms broodingly behind this strikingly designed hotel and country resort, an inspired creation of Dunkeld-born barrister, pastoralist and vigneron Allan Myers, OC. It's a place where local graziers might shout their shearers a beer in the public bar and bistro at one end, then join a throng of visitors in the classy dining room"

Age Good Food Guide 2005 score 15/20

Gourmet Traveller 2005 Restaurant Guide "The stunning design ofthis contemporary resort, in landscaped gardens on the site of an old staging post, is almost as impressive as the brooding presence of Mt Sturgeon looming behind."

The Foodies' Guide 2004,Allan Campion & Michele Curtis,'It could be the combination of the fantastic views of Mount Sturgeon,the modern,slick dining room and the great regional food and wines.'

Age Good Food Guide Awards 2004 1 hat, score 15/20

Gourmet Traveller Restaurant Guide Australia 2004, Good vegetarian options,'is a contemporary leirsure resort, conference centre and restaurant.Cleverly seperated from the public bar and bistro, the spacious dining room is a showcase for western district produce and regional wines...gastronomic highlights.'

Herald Sun, citystyle, Dining Out, Stephen Downes, 1/7/03, Score 12/20

Age, Sunday Life, Eat streets, 21/4/02

Herald Sun 25/7/2000

Age Epicure 18/7/2000

Age, DOMAIN, 29.1.00