Sofitel Noosa Pacific Resort

“Absolutely 5* - wonderful hotel, wonderful staff - read the review for a few buts”

We stayed at the Elysium Hotel – absolutely 5 *. Wonderful rooms, the best hotel shower we’ve had anywhere in the word with super towels. Colours are very relaxing and fittings are highest quality. Bedside USB and USB-C and a kettle. Great fridge complete with milk. The staff are Soooo friendly. W… more

We stayed at the Elysium Hotel – absolutely 5 *. Wonderful rooms, the best hotel shower we’ve had anywhere in the word with super towels. Colours are very relaxing and fittings are highest quality. Bedside USB and USB-C and a kettle. Great fridge complete with milk. The staff are Soooo friendly. We pulled up and immediately the gentlemen took our bags from the car and delivered them to our room while we checked in. Janice on reception was wonderful and everyone was so helpful. Nothing was too much trouble for housekeeping. We availed ourselves of the free champagne in reception on several days. Nice touch. Cold buffet breakfast was good but the hot buffet was pretty rubbishy. Undercooked bacon and sausages, soggy hash browns – just very unappealing. Having to order eggs at the table was a pain as it is very hard to co-ordinate freshly cooked toast if you don’t know if the eggs will be 2 minutes or 20 minutes. Other hotels I can order the eggs myself and see if there is a queue then cook my toast to match. Whilst the quality of the food at the Cibara restaurant is good, the menu selection is limited and most days it is too noisy to be of any use so we only ate there on our first night. Similarly the staff at the Capri bar are very helpful but when the DJ is playing, you have to write your orders as the noise level is impossible. Staff were really nice especially the Dutch barman. We were amazed that the barman didn’t know how to make a Rum Punch!) The Riviera bar is hardly ever open when we wanted to use it. It only opens a few days a week and only for a few hours. The hotel badly needs a good quality restaurant (without a DJ blasting out) and a decent, quiet, relaxing bar that is open every evening before and after dinner. Several times we had to go to the Capri bar to get drinks which we then went into the (closed) Riviera bar to drink. We stayed in a pool view junior suite and really enjoyed just sitting on the balcony in the evenings. Next time we’ll try to get one on the other side as the sun was just too hot in the afternoons. We had a couple of visits from lorikeets which was wonderful. We ate out every night so here’s our summary of the restaurants we visited (my wife has a shellfish allergy which limits her options) : Laguna Jack’s 4* The only place we visited that sold chicken wings so we had them as a starter. 7/10. They are cooked then sauce poured over instead of being cooked in the sauce. My wife had a pretty disappointing fillet steak and I had the pork ribs which again were way from the best I’ve had. Meaty but not a lot of flavour even with the sauce. We did go back for brunch one day just to have some chicken wings as it seems to be the only place that serves them. Pretty limited selection of wines by the glass but great selection by the bottle Shame my wife drinks whites and I drink reds Noosa Boathouse 5* Great place to have a sunset drink. We sat for a long time listening to the hundreds of roosting parakeets/lorikeets? Nice casual dining and the best fish and chips we had during our stay. We will definitely be back next time we are in Noosa Locale 4* Locale has a really high-quality feel although we found the menu fairly limited. We had the lamb shoulder between us which was very nice but we both thought lacking in flavour compared to English roast lamb. Very nice but not in our top 3 Rickys 5* Tales a little perseverance to find but well worth it. Fabulous place for a lunchtime drink by the river so we booked for dinner. I had the crab spaghettini and chargrilled spatchcock and my wife passed on the starter and had the fillet steak. It was all really excellent and was in our top 2 restaurants. Definitely will go back Sails 5* The other of our top 2 restaurants. It had been raining so the roof cover was on making it a tad noisy. My wife had the pate (excellent) and a great fillet steak whilst I had the seafood cocktail and amazingly nice Moreton Bay bug. The passion fruit brulee was perfect as was the Apple tart. Absolutely faultless all round. Boardwalk Bistro 3* Quite disappointing. Service was pretty slow and it was hard work to get a second glass of water. I enjoyed the seafood linguine but honestly can’t remember what else we had. Gusto 4* Our last night and the pictures looked really nice. We were seated near the entrance and there was a constant stream of people passing so when a window table became available we sked to move. We both had the dusk spring rolls to start which were very nice but not stunning. My wife has the Sole Meuniere which she found a bit greasy due to the amount of butter used to cook it but I think that that is the dish. I was going to have the Moreton Bay bugs but sadly there were off so I settled for the seafood spagettini which was excellent – a few clams and a few large tasty prawns.

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