Sign up now for FREE SmartMoney.com Newsletters Enter your email address below
Destination Guides
Dining And Drinking
Generally, when people visit Yosemite National Park, their goal is to experience the spectacular scenery and see at least some of the Park's world-famous sights. Lots of people take tours, many come in cars for the day, and others camp and backpack for several days. The focus here is truly more on adventure and exploration than on food. However, after a few hours or days in the mountain air, you are sure to get hungry.
Yosemite Valley and Yosemite Village
The most interesting, elegant, and perhaps the best of all choice is the old Ahwahnee Dining Room. This huge, vaulted, elegant room is open for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and afternoon tea. The menus vary with the seasons and in the evening you must dress in something more elegant than shorts and T-shirts, but you will experience a taste of the original park both in dishes and decor. The Yosemite Lodge Food Court. Visitors will not have to wander very far in the Village to find some sort of restaurant or snack bar.
Wawona and Southern Yosemite
Three restaurants are in the park, but outside of the Valley. On the east side, you can have breakfast and dinner at the Tuolumne Meadows Lodge Restaurant (make reservations for evening meals); its prime rib and New York steak dinners are highly praised and sought after by hungry hikers.
Off Highway 41 is the Wawona Hotel Dining Room. Like the hotel, the room is full of light and airy ambience. The food has a good reputation for both quality and quantity. Breakfast is bacon or sausage and eggs, or French toast; lunch is a buffet that changes with the seasons and often includes local fresh vegetables and herbs. At dinner, you will find some amazing delicacies including Indian Tom's South Fork Trout or crackling roast duckling.
On the west side of the park, along Highway 120, is the White Wolf Lodge Restaurant. Open for breakfast and dinner, its casual dining room serves the usual bacon and eggs for breakfast and has a dinner menu that changes with the season—most days offer dinner specials that can include fish, chicken, beef, pasta or vegetarian dishes. The portions are large; the quality is excellent; and, the staff is happy to share 'secret vantage points' within the park.
Outside the Park
Variety abounds as you travel to and from the Park. If you are coming from Lee Vining, you will find several casual and fun places there, like Niceley's Restaurant, Bodie Mike's Barbeque or a top-drawer Tioga Lodge Restaurant on Mono Lake. Keep in mind that the eastern side of the Sierra often gets heavy snow in winter, so your selection during those months may be limited due to road closures.
Mariposa is an interesting little historical city on the southwest side of the park. You can enter the park on either the south or west side from here. Here you will find Gold Rush charm and the upscale Charles Street Dinner House where you will want to wear something a bit more formal than shorts and T-shirts. Midpines is in between Mariposa and the west entrance of the park and Recovery Bistro & Cafe.
Oakhurst is another area that is south of the park that offers a variety of dining choices. It also has some gold rush influence. Castillo's Mexican Food which has the look and feel of a real Mexican cantina. You can have great scones, coffee, and ice cream, as well as regular meals at the casual Yosemite Coffee and Roasting Company.
SmartMoney Select 
Sign up now for FREE
Dining And Drinking
