Dunellen Hotel

I love places like this: Good food with reasonable prices. We had the pretzel with crab meat appetizer and the steamers. Both were yummy as was the thick and tasty potato soup. The horseradish sauce on the prime rib sandwich was the perfect touch. Beer selection was decent and came from the bar to our table quickly. Don’t mind the basement atmosphere. We will be back.

I love ittttt
I’m a regular Hotel patron!
Love the downstairs ambience!
Favorites:
French onion soup well done
Greek salad with blackened chicken
Sweet potato fries
Chicken Caesar wrap
Cowboy burger
Basically it’s all good!
Great beers on tap– love Stella — and always a new ipa
Reasonably priced– great for any age!
Go!

The Dunellen Hotel is a comfortable family and friends atmosphere style restaurant. You are immediately made welcome by the friendly staff that includes owners/​mangers. I have had many meals at the Hotel and always had good service and a good meal at a reasonable price.
Today I had the pleasure of having dinner at the Hotel and every dish delivered to our table was delicious and demanded our attention.
I am a fanatic when it comes to Diablo sauce, as you know the sauce is a careful balance of spices perfectly blended.
Tonight The Hotel offered a Mussels Marinara Diablo (Mussels in a Spicy Marinara Sauce, served with Warm Ciabatta bread). This was the best Diablo Sauce I have eaten, the mussels were clean (absolutely no grit) and cook to perfection.
This was not the only great dish offered, our meal became a tasting, we ended up trying and sharing each of the dishes ordered. It was a great time and a great meal.
Gather your family and friends, go to the Hotel share a great time and great food.

I was charmed by the Dunellen Hotel and will definitely be back. Staff is friendly and the atmosphere is welcoming. We ate upstairs in the restaurant and enjoyed looking at all of the historical photos of the area. The orchard chicken sandwich (with tart green apple and cranberry Dijon) was completely AWESOME, can’t say that enough. I even asked the manager (or perhaps owner?) as we were leaving if they have that often since it was listed as a special. We also shared appetizers of tequila lime shrimp and French Onion soup, both of which were excellent. My husband’s chicken cordon bleu was fine but not quite as rave-​worthy as the apps and my sandwich. However he did say his sides (vegetables and rice) were very fresh and seemed «from scratch.» I am glad we were finally able to give Dunellen Hotel a try and now I can’t wait to go back again and get that orchard chicken.

French onion soup is great. First time here they have a great selection of bottled craft beer. Awesome Long Island ice teas as well had the prime rib sandwich. Wasn’t too bad at all. Would def recommend coming here!

Came here on a Monday a few weeks ago with a friend. I love that they have specials on weeknights such as on Monday — it is buy one get one free burger. We had the french onion soup for appetizer which was cheesy and oh so good. The soup was not too salty either which I prefer. I had the burger that had an interesting type of cheese (port wine cheddar) which was really good. I like that they use Kaiser rolls too. The décor is basement pub feel. They have free popcorn instead of bread as a starter. They have a good selection of different beer. Overall gets my thumbs up approval.

Great pub food. Eat downstairs for the bar seen or if you want quiet head upstairs. Great wings, burgers and sandwiches. Service is usually good as well.

The hotel has two places where you can eat.
The downstairs bar is pretty good. It’s a small place but can hold a lot of people.
The upstairs dining room is basically the same concept.
The food is okay, nothing super awesome about it, but not horrible either. The service is at par too. The prices are a bit high if you ask me.
I had a party here too, upstairs, and they were adequate with the service, but pretty expensive overall.

This is a great little gem of a restaurant and bar. Excellent food and service across the board. I’ve eaten in the upstairs dining room but prefer the atmosphere of the Rathskellar downstairs. I’ve been here for lunch, dinner, family get-​togethers, and the occasional late night pint with some friends and never had a bad experience. There are regularly changing specials so the menu stays fresh. Definitely worth trying out if you haven’t yet.

My mom and I frequently stop by for a few drinks and an appetizer, usually a burger as well. Great prices, great food. Great mixed drinks and beer variety.

Dunellen Hotel is the best. The wings are awesome as are all the sandwiches and salads. Great owners and friendly staff. Highly recommend.

Worth checking out. Good place to meet up with friends. Go downstairs for cooler vibe. Off rt 22 and close by 287, makes good location for meet up. Foods pretty good. American menu. Downstairs is basement style, stone wall, wine cellar. They have a popcorn machine, you can help yourself. Be careful leaving, you can only make a right onto Washington from front street. Cops look for people disregarding that. It’s a popular local spot, so everyone knows each other. You may feel, like you’re crashing a party, it’s okay… The locals are nice.

The Dunellen Hotel has two dining areas — the upstairs dining room and the Rathskellar located in the lower level. The menus are the same, but the ambiance varies greatly. The dining room is just that — a dining room — and good for a nice dinner out or a meal with a larger group.
Ive eaten at the Dunellen Hotel numerous times and have never been dissapointed. Its typical American fare with a unique special every now and then. If you are a soup and salad person, you’ll be happy. The soups are great, especially the French Onion soup. Dinner platters are very generous.
Petsonally, I prefer eating down in the Rat. The ambiance is great and the bar area is nice for a beer after work!

It is a very unique place. The basement bar is a small area but can hold a lot of people. The bathrooms are VERY SMALL but clean.
The employees are great and service seemed a little slow but they were very busy.
The meal was cooked well and tasted great.

Its amusing how many people visiting the unique Dunnellen Hotel lower restaurant with the same menu and come up with such widely diversified opinions. Amusing but not surprising. Patrons range from foodies to hard workers on a lunch break. Fine dining its not. Ambience? Its a basement with xmas lights. What it does have is freshly prepared modest food and drink served efficiently by friendly folks at reasonable prices. Take it for what it’s worth. Just don’t order the pizza.

The triple onion soup was very good, but the best part of the meal was by far the onion rings: crispy and didn’t fall apart when I bit into them.
The burger I got was excessively greasy, which is why this place does not receive the extra star.
Do yourself a favor and get the onion rings!

The waitresses are really nice and the triple onion soup is delicious. The food is ok (don’t order the salmon if you love salmon)
The ambiance is just ok. If you are planning on a late weekend dinner, keep in mind that you will be sitting right next to a bunch of bar people drinking. It wasn’t awful, but it felt a little weird to eat my food next to a group of rowdy T-​shirt and jeans clad bros on one side and three TVs playing sports on the other.
The margaritas are top notch. I went there for that specific purpose and they did not disappoint.

This is a hole in the wall American bar with the best French onion soup I’ve had.
The décor is not the greatest but service is very friendly with the same couple of waitresses always serving us every time we go.
Even the other patrons are often pretty friendly, which isn’t always the case in a bar-​restaurant setting (I’m from Staten Island). My wife and I are often struggling to bring the baby’s stroller down the staircase into the basement bar and a couple of times now, someone has asked us if we need help. Very down to earth atmosphere eating here surrounded by salt of the earth type folks.
Mondays they have burger night where you buy one and get one free (just the bun and burger are free on the 2^nd — you still have to pay for toppings). It is one of the best deals around. The burgers are top notch too — big and tasty, though the chips they come with are a bit stale. Sweet potato fries are good though.
They have a pretty good selection of beers including domestic, microbrews and imports — just off the top of my head — Stella and Guiness on tap, bottles include Blue moon, Victory Hop Devil, Molson. A margarita we ordered once was pretty weak.
I have yet to try the rib eye steak but it seems like a good deal. 20 bucks for a huge steak of a good cut. My wife and I went for taco night once before. That was just ok. Mis Amigos down the street definitely has better Mexican.
Overall, its a great place to eat with great value and friendly service.

The only reason I took a star away is because the basement bar was a little scary.
But the food was incredible. We had a pretzel braid with crab dip baked on. The pretzel was huge and perfect. Soft on the inside, chewy on the outside, a little buttery. Even though the crab dip was imitation crab, it was so good. I could have eaten it as an entrée.
For entrees we had the blackened chicken Alfredo — which they made with regular grilled chicken no problem at all — and the meatloaf platter. Meatloaf is definitely hit or miss in a lot of places but theirs was moist and very flavorful, with yummy pan gravy. The mashed potatoes were legit, not instant, and very well seasoned. The Alfredo was to die for. Chicken cooked perfectly — juicy and not dry at all.
For dessert, he had apple pie with huge chunks of yummy apples. I was full so I went with something simple. The chipwich. Even THAT was awesome… Not hard as a rock like you’d expect.
Also, drinks were perfect. Strong enough that you could taste the alcohol, but just enough so you could drink it without being overwhelmed.

This place was pretty good. We didn’t get to eat downstairs as some other reviewers suggested. This was because the wait was 20 minutes and we were HONGRAY ;). So word to the wise, make reservations for the pub downstairs. Anyway, our waitress was serious but efficient and the food was well priced.
We both ordered the triple onion soup and it was very tasty actually, heavy. I had a Guinness which was nice and my husband had a glass of red wine.
For my entrée (couldn’t finish it because the soup was so filling) I had the lobster Reuben which was good. My husband had the meatloaf and he didn’t really enjoy it very much. Too heavy and a pâté like consistency.