Chris Luth
Google
Of the several eateries in Canyon Village, this one looked to have the most interesting menu with fresh cooked to order food (the other main one was buffet style, and the other cafes were mostly just sandwiches, etc.), so I picked it.
I was seated quickly at one of the fountain stools. (Note that all of the seating at this restaurant is shared seating around several long and skinny U-shaped soda fountain counters. The seating is pretty tight, and my neighbors on both sides and I bumped elbows several times.)
Unfortunately, it went downhill from there. I sat for almost 10 minutes without being acknowledged at all by the server responsible for our counter. (Each of the counters has its own dedicated server for the 20 or so patron seated at that counter.) I sat watching the server sit for at least five minutes slowly punching things into the POS terminal—far more than should have been required.
Finally, the server, Josh, approached. He kind of halfheartedly threw menus at me and my neighbors. Several minutes later, he came around to take orders, and he just assumed I was with the people sitting next to me, even though I had sat down at least five minutes before they did.
I ordered a bison burger and asked to hold the pickles, and he just said “everything comes on the side” (I don’t like the vinegar flavor pickles leave on things). I also ordered a root beer float; despite the name, this “soda fountain” doesn’t serve malts or milkshakes.
When the float came, I asked for a straw so that I could actually drink the root beer. All I got was a “we’re not allowed to give out straws.“
The food took about an average amount of time to come out. The people sitting next to me asked for ketchup, and Josh merely gesture at the corral with ketchup without even saying anything.
The ketchup bottle in my corral was empty, but of course it took me probably a good six or seven minutes to get it refilled, because despite having only about 20 people to take care of all seated in a row, I couldn’t get Josh’s attention.
I can put up with bad service if the food is good, but this was actually pretty mediocre food. Everything was flavorless – I never have to add salt to my food, but I had to add quite a bit of salt to the fries just to coax any flavor out of them.
I know people don’t generally go into a national park expecting amazing food from lowest-bidder concessionaires, but this is probably the worst meal I’ve had in a national park — and certainly the worst service. I almost never leave anything below 20% tip, but in this case, I tipped 15% and rounded down, and after I got up, I still felt like I had overtipped him. I get that a huge number of visitors to Yellowstone are from overseas and the servers in the place like this probably get pretty jaded and just don’t give much effort, because they know they’re not going to get much in the way of tips, but still.
In its current state, I wouldn’t recommend eating here. Can’t give any information about other eateries in the park, but this one is skippable unless Delaware North, the concessionaire, can figure out how to fix these problems.
