PA Hotel staff Sophie Sugars, Susan Wyborn and Brenda Kent celebrate the hotel’s success.
Prince Alfred Hotel at Booval has done Ipswich proud, taking out the Best Casual Dining Award at the Queensland Hotel Association Awards for Excellence.
The win, for its Plantations restaurant, recognises the PA for offering affordable, consistent, quality food and high service standards.
Hotel manager Peter Coultas said it was a major coup for the hotel and its staff.
“The staff are absolutely committed to Plantations and it is a real credit to them for us to pick up this award,” he said.
“Plantations has been here nearly 22 years but this was actually the first time we have put it in to the awards for casual dining, so we were pretty happy with the win.”
Plantations at the PA is iconic not just in Ipswich but also in the hotel industry.
When it opened more than two decades ago, it was the first time a coffee shop had been put in a hotel in Queensland.
“That kind of set the trend a little bit for hotels offering something different than your normal pub food, and a different environment people to enjoy their local hotel,” Mr Coultas said.
“A lot of hotels followed suit. There were some in Brisbane that put coffee franchises in, like Gloria Jeans, after looking at how successful Plantations was.”
The hotel holds the longest continuous liquor licence in Queensland, stretching back 176 years, but under owners Clive and Mary-Anne Johnson, who bought the pub in 1987, it has always looked forward.
In recent years it has undergone significant upgrades and changes including the removal of the public bar in place of a craft beer bar and closure of onsite TAB facilities.
“The hotel is a leader in the industry, we’re not a follower and we are always trying to give the local community a better food option and a changing food option with new experiences,” Mr Coultas said.
“The key to our ongoing success has been identifying trends and then changing to go with them.
“Plantations is one of three unique dining experiences we’ve got. Plantations has the lighter style meals and then we’ve got Char’d Steakhouse which is our signature restaurant and has a full menu.
“The third unique offering is Tap’d, our craft beer bar which offers 72 different beers and ciders on tap. For a hotel to survive you have to be heavily invested in food and without that it’s pretty hard to survive.
“The days of the public bar are gone, and we made the decision when we built Tap’d to take out the TAB and we have not looked back.
“We’re not afraid to try new things. We’re always looking at what we offer, the food and experiences, and listening to our customers to give the community what it wants.”
PA Hotel was previously awarded Queensland Hotel Association 2016 Hotel of the Year.
Long and proud history
PA Hotel at Booval was built in 1842 by Mr D Bergin.
It was a two-storey timber hotel surrounded by 40 acres of Cotton Fields. The original cold room still stands today, dating back to 1842.
In 1961, the historic Prince Alfred Hotel was destroyed by fire before being rebuilt in 1963. In 1987, the Johnson Family purchased the hotel from Carlton and have remained passionately independent ever since.
In December 2012, the hotel opened its new signature steakhouse, Char’d. The name was derived from when the hotel burnt down but continued to serve cold beer out of the cold room; the only part of the hotel not destroyed by the fire.
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