New American Restaurants in Yellowstone National Park, WY

“Menu is extremely plain, but the quality of food is adequate and the service is prompt enough. It's all counter seating, on stools with no backs. A hostess seats diners but, although the restaurant was full, we were seated within about 5 minutes at lunchtime on a busy day in August.“

“This review is for the dining room for dinner, not the hotel or any other meals. My wife and I live in D.C. and decided to try the Lake Lodge dining room after eating at the Old Faithful Inn and at the eatery up in Canyon. The dinner options at Old Faithful were excellent and the food at Canyon was not even 100% edible. So, on our second night in Canyon, we decided to make a reservation and drove down to the Lake Lodge. We were not disappointed, and the food at the Lake Lodge was actually slightly better than at Old Faithful Inn. I would advise people to pretend the buffet doesn't exist and just steer clear of it. Everything we ordered from the a la carte menu was excellent, fresh, well-seasoned, and perfectly cooked. The bottle of wine we ordered was extremely reasonable and was so good we ordered a few more bottles while we were in the park. Our server was exceptional, friendly, professional, and honestly provided us a better overall experience than we generally get in the big city. He was so well-liked that another 4-top specifically requested to sit in his section while we were there. I can't remember his name, but he was from Nevada.

We ate in 3 of Yellowstone's lodge dining rooms during our visit, and we were also pleased that the menus between them all seemed slightly different, but all had the same excellent quality and service. Perhaps some people ate on off-nights, but given the length of our stay and the various times we visited the dining rooms, I didn't notice any deficiencies. I would eat at any of the Yellowstone historic lodge dining rooms with confidence, but the stuff up at Canyon really is pretty terrible, yet it somehow gets better reviews than this restaurant. I'm hoping this review will go a little ways toward remedying that.“