Fancy a getaway only 1.5 hours away from the Sydney CBD in the picturesque town of Leura? Look no further as we have the tips for you! It's hard to visit Leura without spending a small fortune, as there's a number of extremely expensive lodgings and restaurants in the town and surrounds. However, we will point you to somewhere that is extremely good value for money at high quality. The Alexandra hotel, established 1903 is the only licensed hotel in Leura and a short stroll from the mall. It is an old quaint boutique building with ornate trims and stained glass windows. The hotel is sectioned off into a number of areas, with a sports bar and lounge bar (with floor to ceiling bookshelf). There's also plenty of space for a party or function. The hotel is right beside Leura train station, but the noise isn't obvious at all. The hotel aptly has has a railway theme to it, with the outdoor bar called "platform 3", and a Leura Rail sign featuring in the dining room. We also stayed in the hotel. It was a comfortable heritage room with vintage furniture, double bed and modern bathroom. They also have some modern additions of an a/c and tv. The room opens onto a balcony with a nice outlook of the hotel's backyard beer garden. The hotel is a great spot to dine, whether it be lunch or dinner in either of the two beer gardens for a more causal vibe or a more upmarket experience in the dining room, named "Redfern Bistro". There's some casual food like burgers and pizzas, with the pizzas made in the wood fired oven by Marco Marano, but we chose to eat in the dining room. The summer menu, prepared by chef Anna Borna features modern Australian gastro pub food, beautifully cooked and presented. We began with a glass of bubbles and some Garlic bread made on a house baked baguette, topped with melted garlic and parsley butter. This came out with the confit mushrooms - portobello and button mushrooms cooked in olive oil with rosemary and lemon with feta, almond and coriander dukkah (gf). Other entrees on offer include oysters, liver pate, calamari and baked haloumi. For the mains, the Pan roasted duck breast instantly piqued our interest. The meat was cooked to perfection, skin nicely seasoned, served with duck fat potatoes and rustic heirloom carrots. It's accompanying home made Peking duck citrus sauce was brilliant and kept us searching the plate for more of it. From specials board, we couldn't go past the pan fried and seared ocean trout. This was a splendid fish dish, the skin salted, nicely rendered and crisp. The flesh was perfect; a lovely pink orange hue, flakey and melt in the mouth followed by the beautiful flavour of the fish. The sauce was a delicious combination of smoked paprika dill and grapefruit veloute, served with roasted potatoes, charred leeks, broad beans, peas and cherry tomatoes. Whilst we were extremely satisfied at this point, we had to go with the dessert option on the specials menu, the banana spilt. Here it is the classic dessert that has been pimped up with two bananas, deep fried in a Moreish crisp salty batter. This has been placed atop a butterscotch sauce and served with vanilla bean ice cream. So tasty, it was irresistible. Worth driving up to the blue mountains for the beautiful pub alone and the scenery in the area is an added bonus. read more

This is concerning the restaurant. Additionally, this review is all about the service. We went here as part of a tour group of 20. Our orders were taken ahead of time and called ahead by our tour guide. First, let me say, we found the food quite tasty. I had the vegetarian burger with eggplant and chipotle sauce. It was flavorful, well seasoned, and accompanied by perfect hot chips. My husband also enjoyed his grilled fish and chips with tartare sauce. Despite being in a remote mountain town, it was as food or better than anything we had eaten in Sydney. The restaurant itself was quaint and cozy and had beautiful views of the Blue Mountains. But then there was the service. And that's where the three stars come in. It would have been five stars otherwise. One member of our tour group changed their order. Then there was a simple to fix mix up between my order and the order of another group member. The staff member (unsure if he was a server or kitchen manager or what) LOUDLY proclaimed what a pain tour groups are and how ridiculous we all were. He then stomped off. And when he returned, he was extremely RUDE to the group leader. These tour groups must bring hundreds of dollars to this small town restaurant. They bring multiple tours of 20+ people each week. If they don't care about them, I can't imagine this establishment cares about anyone. I don't care how good the food is, I would never return after being treated like trash. read more

Good food. Poor service. Messed up our drink order (ordered 2, poured 3). Food order was lost or forgotten. Luckily a passing female employee noticed we were sitting there watching others at our table eating their lunch while we had none. Food finally arrived without an excuse, reason, or apology for the long delay. read more

After a day spent hiking in the Blue Mountains, my sister and I had burgers on the brain. Not just any tuck shop burger, but a charred and beefy, packed with goodness, beetroot and pickles kinda burger. A true-blue Aussie pub burger. A quick search on Yelp returned grim results. And talking to the locals was met with ''errrr''s and ''umm...''s..until we met The Alexandra Hotel, or what we'll now call The Alex. Its precicely the place you want to recline in after a day of trecking. Old timey, countryside warmth. You can cosy indoors or set up in the generous outside patio which looks over the misty Leura hills... After taking in that serene scene for a short while, our burger arrived and totally nailed the brief. The Alex is definitely the best pub, and maybe even best place to eat and drink, in Leura/Katoomba area. read more

Hearty food, with a nice, restaurant-style bistro area. Beautiful selection of wines. Be certain to check out the Specials board, and the history of Queen Alexandra and why the Bistro is called "Redferns". read more

Alexandra Hotel - So pretty after dark. Would be sitting outside if it wasn't so cold. - Hotels Near Me - Leura, NSW

In the Crown of the Mountains .... lies Beautiful Leura ..... and here also lies an old style Pub with good beer and good food. On the way back from Orange we decided to stop off for dinner before heading down the mountain and back home. The sun was setting ..... it was cold ..... and on our minds were something yummy and hearty. The food was great .... perfect for winter days .... the beer matched very well .... The Hotel was grand and warm ...... and with two pool tables caught my interest ...... I would recommend this hotel to anyone wanting a good alternative from the Leura High street .... it has quality and choice ..... as long as you don't mind some of the 70's look in some sections. read more

See all

Had the lamb shanks. Huge portions so you might want to share. It was delicious! I liked the salad with beets in it. Service was exquisite. Very fast and attentive. They will join the fun like friends. I really liked them. Had my first Pavlova here. It was so pretty and tasted delicious. I was told it was a unique spin on the original. I'll leave the details as a surprise. Oh! And there's a very handsome bartender there. =) read more

The great thing about The Alex is it has everything you could want in a pub a mix of local & international craft & mainstream beers & a good wine selection. At the rear is a beer garden & restaurant that's a bit posh & a bit Leura while the front bar & beer garden is more traditional pub for sports teams after game drinks or tradies after work. There is pool tables & fire places to warm up by during the mountains long cold winters, I can't say enough how good a nice drink by the fire is after a long day in the depths of winter. read more

Absolutely wonderful food in a great atmosphere. BIG portion sizes that are well-priced. My husband and I enjoyed a few drinks sitting in front of the fire place after a day of sight seeing around the Blue Mountains. read more

See all

very much recommend going here! all thanks to daniel the bartender!!! he's so gorg xx and always makes sure my friends and i have a great time we all love him once again that's DANIEL the bartender he's our fav read more

After a long day of travel, we were suggested eating dinner at the hotel restaurant. To be clear, the food was great! However, they were short of menus, glasses for water as well and then they needed to reuse our wine glasses when we asked for a second round of drinks. Upon delivery, all of the wines were wrong and mixed up. What tipped us over the edge was the fact that our food took far too long and then even when some of the food was delivered, the rest of the plates delivered were AFTER the first set were already finished and cleared away. All the same round of food, but delivered at different intervals and after others had already finished their food. read more

Horrible experience We visited the Alexandra hotel (myself and my boyfriend who is visiting from New York) purely for lunch before heading back down from the mountains. whilst eating lunch we decided to have a cider I am currently on my P plates so would need to wait a good 2-3 hours before driving so we made a spontaneous decision to stay the night at the hotel. After asking for availabilities they informed us of a queen room that was available which I asked to book. they handed us the keys and showed us how to get to the room. As we were still finishing our lunch we didn't go straight upstairs and approx. 30 minutes later another bar lady came and got the keys off of us and told us to get them when we were ready which I thought was a bit odd but brushed it off. We finished lunch, asked for the keys back and headed upstairs. This is when things started to go pearshaped... aprox 10 mins later we had a loud knock on the door and 'hello can you open the door??' so we did... the lady who took our key while we were eating blurted out 'what are you doing?! you were supposed to just be looking at the room??' both my boyfriend and I were completely shocked... Ive never been given keys to a room I asked to book and was just expected to 'look at the room' so I replied wich 'no....we booked the room...' she was all.. oh ok oh that's fine then you just need to fill out some paperwork and pay.... which I did immediately... very strange experience. We booked a table for dinner at the restaurant for 8pm, arrived at 7:40 and were seated immediately. our dinner took 55 minutes to arrive, we ordered a burger and a lasagna... no explanation from staff, no offering of breads or anything, we asked for a drink order TWICE and were TWICE told by the gentleman waiter 'just one minute' while briskly walking past and holding his finger up.. at this point I was becoming unimpressed. at the 55 minutes when the food arrived they informed us that we would receive comp dessert for the long wait... Through this whole experience I not once approached staff about the long wait or dissatisfaction as they were already receiving it from 2 other tables in the restaurant and the chef was loudly banging things around in the kitchen with frustration which we watched through the serving window.. when receiving dinner we asked for another drink order which they replied if we would like this instead of comp dessert that was fine which we agreed. Dinner was over we paid headed upstairs to our room and relaxed for about an hour or so before heading down to the main bar where a DJ was playing some 80's music which was fun, my boyfriend was having a good night, we had ordered 2 rounds of drinks (our 5th drink each within a 8 hour period through the day at the same venue) whilst paying for the second round of drinks my boyfriend was standing next to me ...remembering he is not a local and is visiting from overseas.. picked up the drink tray that has holes and a catcher in it by the corner and said 'babe whats this??' accidently tipping it slightly towards us and spilling some alcohol on me. my immediate response was 'babe put it down' he apologised and started wiping me down with napkins bless him. immediately the bar man who had served us our 2 rounds pointed at my boyfriend and yelled 'YOURE CUT OFF!' we were both kind of shocked I reminded him we have had 2 drinks at this bar in the last hour, surrounded by drunken dancers, and how unimpressed I had been with the whole day of service from this establishment. this was where we ended our night and went to bed in our non smoking room which reaked of cigarette. Will never be back. read more