Nitmiluk Restaurant, Katherine Gorge - Help Desperately Needed

The Nitmiluk Chalet Kitchen, where dreams go to die.

In the Northern Territory of Australia, thirty kilometres from the outback town of Katherine, hidden in thick bushland are the Nitmiluk Chalets. If you have ever wanted to see Australian wildlife outside a zoo, then this would be the place to visit. The whole place was crawling with kangaroos wandering the grounds, all quite comfortable to share the space with us humans. Kookaburras kept an eye on everything, and the tree branches were dripping with sleepy bats. Apparently the nearby rivers were choc full of crocs (the reptile, not the footwear), but I didn't see any (living) proof during my time there. A pity, since I brought along my khakis, and had almost perfected my Steve Irwin impression, "Crikey, what a harmless looking stingray!"

Two thumbs up for the setting. Lovin' that Ikea patio furniture.

So we were miles from town, in the middle of nowhere... What would we do for dinner? There was a little restaurant in the main building, which had an impressive balcony area overlooking the river and the bushland beyond. A perfect setting for a relaxed meal with a view of the sunset. And what luck! We were the only people in the whole place! All the other suckers staying here didn't know what they were missing. We got ourselves a nice spot and asked for the menu.





*** WARNING ***
The rest of this review is nothing more than a reckless rant. There is no actual information here. Only pain. Read on if you are feeling good about yourself, and need to be reminded that there is evil in the world.

The crumpled piece of paper we were given should have been the first clue that something was wrong. Whoever put together this poorly formatted food list must have skipped an awful lot of computer classes at school. We hoped that it was because they were too busy perfecting their techniques in the kitchen meaning they were simply too busy to make a menu look pretty... let alone look professional... in any way... at all. And we were not beside a pool, so I don't get where the heading came from.

"The Menu"

So we ordered the local crocodile skewers, along with the camel skewers which were also locally sourced according to our waiter. Mentioning that the croc meat was local was probably some kind of lame attempt to infer that the chef wrestles one out of the river whenever an order comes in. Given that the only other thing on the menu listed as local was the Barramundi, it made me wonder where the hell they were getting their kangaroo from. Not that I thought they imported it from Japan, but surely they had all the kangaroo 'meat' they needed, bouncing around the restaurant waiting to be turned into hoppity-chops. Look, Ill leave the menu alone now, but it really hurt my brain on the day. Enough said.

Crocodile skewers on the right, and skewers of sadness on the left.

Our recently-wrestled, locally sourced skewers arrived, and I swear that the picture above shows what the camel skewers (the brown ones) looked like when they arrived. We didn't gnaw on them before taking the photo, nor did we step on them, or donate half of each skewer to a charity aimed at helping people with no typing skills. No. They were proudly placed before us looking like well used toothpicks. At least the croc skewers were done nicely, with some lemon, dried chilli and dried dill sprinkled over them sparingly enough that the relatively delicate flavour of the reptile could still shine. Crocodile meat looks like nothing more than white steak, and tastes like a subdued piece of rump. Nothing to write home about, even though that is exactly what I am doing right now. But let's move on. I would cover the flavour of the camel skewers, but they had been overcooked to the point that any colour, texture or taste that may have ever existed in the poor animal had been rudely extinguished; banished to that special part of Hell reserved for the souls of burnt toast and soggy nachos. Left behind for us to enjoy were the shredded poo-brown carcasses of stale, leathery fibre, containing all the excitement and taste-sensations of a cold doorstop.

For mains we had ordered the kangaroo, and we ordered it rare. I like my meat to be rare enough that it could provide someone with a blood transfusion. They must have waited for the kangaroo to die of old age before cooking it, since the sunset was long gone by the time the next chapter in this tale of woe began.

A wasted life. Rest In Peace.

I could have called the police, because my meal had been murdered. The chalky dry bricks of protein slumped on my plate looked like they had been left on a corrugated iron rooftop for a week. I felt like offering my meal a glass of water. The accidental vegetable mess dribbling along the side of the plate was a collection of what could have only been leftovers from something more interesting. Mainly consisting of onion and capsicum, there were also a couple of bits of potato and one random sliver of parsnip. It was like the parsnip was a garnish for the onion, which made my head start to hurt again just thinking about how this idea came into being. Let's all just agree to blame the faceless menu-guy.

Did I mention that everything was cold? Everything. Like a winter's day on Neptune. I doubt any normal restaurant could create a meal this bad even if they wanted to. This place pulled it off accidentally. The chef must have been some kind of anti-prodigy. He was about as good at cooking as an elephant might be at knitting, or as a tube of toothpaste might be at invading Russia. He was the perfectly wrong person to be preparing food, for himself, let alone others. At that point I was trying to picture the job interview that he went through to end up in that kitchen...

Boss: "Can you cook?"
The Man For The Job: "God no! My whole life I've only ever eaten space food sticks, because ordering a pizza just seems too complicated. BUT WATCH THIS!!"
*pats head and rubs tummy at the SAME TIME*
Boss: "Welcome aboard!"
*high fives*

Even this guy wasn't impressed.

Something about me - I don't like complaining. After reading this far down, you might not believe me anymore, but I honestly don't like to cause a fuss. If I did, then I would have burned the whole place down to prevent anyone else from being sucked into the same tasteless vortex of cruel anti-food. But I'm more of a bottle-it-all-up-inside kind of guy. Usually. But this was beyond the joke, and something had to be done. We politely informed out waiter that his chef was a madman, and that our meals were not only inedible, but unidentifiable, confusing and not something anyone working there should be proud of. To his enormous credit, the waiter not only replaced all our meals, but also waived the cost of our drinks as a generous, apologetic gesture. That was the highlight of the night, if you don't count the unforgettably horrible food as some kind of masochistic highlight in it's own special way.

When our replacement meals finally turned up, probably only an hour before dawn at by then, our portion of kangaroo had shrunk to a single little piece of meat. They must have run out. Oh well, at least the new bit was edible, if a little overdone. The veggies were the same odd selection of mismatched rubbish, but at least this time round they were warm. We were at a point where we realised that we could not expect to get anything better, so if we wanted to eat that night, we had just better shut up and get on with it. 

We left the restaurant feeling a little robbed, and still a bit hungry, but knowing that at least the waiter knew how to properly handle a legitimate complaint. He probably had a lot of practice by that point in his career. His next job should be for absolutely any Internet Service Provider.

The next morning, after an almost-as-terrible continental breakfast at the same restaurant that we had no other option than to revisit, we noticed another small piece of paper stuck to the door to the restaurant, which was a much more interesting read than the last night's menu...

That Matrix-esque moment when you realise that there IS no chef

Well that explained it. The dude in charge of our food the previous night was probably a fill-in not actually qualified as a chef. But does that excuse our miserable dinner? If a restaurant has no chef, then there is no restaurant. It should remain closed until they are ready to produce food that people might actually want to place in their mouth-holes. No chef, no food. Don't fumble through it, creating terrible customer experiences every time someone orders so much as an orange juice. The decision to leave the restaurant open would have been made by management, which tells me that they have no interest in the quality of their food.

NOT RECOMMENDED

And THAT is the main reason that I am giving a gigantic thumbs down to this gastronomical black hole. Do not eat at this establishment. Behavior like this should not be tolerated or encouraged. If you still plan to visit the Nitmiluk Chalets, do yourself a favour and pack a few sandwiches.


The bill (for 2):
1 x Crocodile Skewers - AUD$3
1 x Camel Skewers - AUD$3
2 x Kangaroo Loin - AUD$56 
TOTAL: AUD$62 (Approx. US$65)

Restaurant address: 30km northeast of Katherine, Northern Territory, Australia

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