Red Rock Grill — Restaurant in Apple Valley

The problem stems from management down. The food was OK, but nothing special. Take your money elsewhere.

My party of five stopped in here around 2pm for lunch after a morning hike on the Emerald Pool Trail. The restaurant was pretty empty so we opted to sit here rather than endure the overcrowded cafeteria below or go back into town. We asked the hostess if we could sit on the patio and she responded “I guess so.” Thereafter, we had problems with our drink orders and with our food orders. We waited approximately forty-five minutes for food, and when we questioned our waiter he responded, “I can’t control the kitchen, but you can speak to my manager.” When I tried to explain that all he needed to do was to keep us informed and that he should not have told us the food was coming out “any minute” if it was going to take another 15 minutes, the waiter responded “you can speak to my manager.” Although I had not requested to see the manager, I accepted the waiter’s invitation to speak with the manager. He returned in a minute to advise that the manager would be out “in a minute”. Fifteen minutes later, the manager still had not come out. Instead, the waiter came out with our bill. When I asked him what happened to the manager, he responded “I don’t know, I told him and he was supposed to come out.” At this point, I decided to find the manager for myself so the waiter led me to him. I found the manager in a seating area near the host stand. He was leaning back on a chair relaxing with another employee and some forms were on the table (waiter schedules?). As a former restaurant manager, I was stunned to see this. I figured he must have been busy dealing with other urgencies to ignore unhappy customers for 15 minutes, but instead he was sitting quite relaxed in the host area opting to ignore us.

He admitted that the waiter had informed him that I wanted to speak to him but that “after reviewing the order tickets, I saw the time was half the time the waiter said it was.” So I asked him “Is it restaurant policy to make an assessment for yourself and if you feel a customer’s complaints were unsubstantiated to ignore them?” I also reminded him the ticket order was likely placed late, and informed him of the other problems with the service. He responded that he planned to speak to me after we finished eating although I am quite confident he told the waiter to send me the bill. He finally offered to “comp the entire bill.” I refused because I did not want anything for free, I just wanted someone to make a simple apology (but we could not get it). I agreed he should comp the half-melted margarita and the side of guacamole that was never delivered, but insisted on paying for the rest of the food we ate. As we exited, we could hear the manager laughing with some co-workers. In sum, we had a pretty bad experience and the problem stems from management down. The food was OK, but nothing special. Take your...

We stayed at the Zion Lodge over New Year's Eve and thought it would be great to just eat lunch and dinner at the lodge and not have to drive into Springdale. Truly this was a pretty big mistake.

Lunch: I opted for a hamburger and salad. The salad was OK. The burger came out alone on a plate with a bun, slice of lettuce, tomato, and a pickle. No condiments. Plain bun. The waiter didn't offer any condiments and hurried away. I finally flagged him down and asked for mustard and got some plain yellow mustard. The burger was dry, flavorless, and curiously tough. Several steps below a fast food burger, which was disconcerting for a $12 burger. I expect more.

I went back to the room and seriously considered cancelling dinner reservations that night, but decided to give them another chance.

Dinner: I ordered the Kolob Rosemary Grilled chicken. There was no rosemary flavor to the chicken and the jalapeno-lime sour cream sauce tasted like straight sour cream. The roasted apple chutney was sweet. It came with garlic mashed potatoes (which were served without butter or gravy and were dense, heavy, and in desperate need of thinning with some milk and/or butter) and mixed vegetables which were the leftover shoestring carrots from the salad bar at lunch with some zucchini. There was no butter, oil, or seasoning on the veggies, just steamed plain veggies. The chicken was served as an airline breast. The skin was rubbery and unappetizing. While the meat was moist, it was flavorless and had NOT been grilled recently. I'm guessing it was grilled and frozen, then microwaved. If it was not frozen, then the kitchen did an extraordinarily bad job at grilling. My friend ordered the grilled pork chop in cider sauce. This was another flavorless piece of meat, however this was so tough that you could barely cut it. No flavor of cider sauce. It came with the same steamed veggies and a few tablespoons of white rice.

We could see into the dessert prep area, and it featured an industrial microwave and the dessert staff was just microwaving each dessert. We passed on dessert.

Between lunch and dinner, they were two relatively tasteless but expensive meals. While the Lodge was a lovely place to stay, the restaurant clearly has a captive audience and puts minimal effort into cooking. We won't eat anything there again and were very...

We stayed at the Lodge for a couple of evenings so Red Rock Grill was the only place to eat with the cafe being closed. We started with dinner the first evening, lunch on our second day and now breakfast before we leave. With the exception of the dinner, staff were all friendly and courteous, it wasn't until we had to send back my dinner selection that the staff started to "care". They were then, what I'd consider, fantastic - pity it took sending food back to the kitchen. Dinner - I ordered a Navajo Taco and husband ordered a burger - burger was "alright, nothing to write home about" but the Frybread for the taco was old and chewy, barely digestible - unfortunately, for them, I'd become accustomed to great Navajo Tacos travelling around Monument Valley and Page, and the meat barely warm or even there, though several handfuls of grated cheese covered this up. We sent it back, it's the first meal I've EVER sent back. After that was amazing! The frybread was freshly cooked, the toppings in much better proportion, the staff much more interactive. I have to say that I was very happy that the kitchen made the effort - just a pity they didn't start out that way Lunch - we both had the self-service taco bar. Exactly what you'd expect from a bain marie but tasty enough. Staff were very attentive and delightful. Breakfast - Husband had the breakfast bar, again, exactly what you'd expecy from bain marie, but I, possibly stupidly, ordered the Eggs Benedict - ummmmmmm, the hollandaise sauce was bitter, so bitter that it's still biting at the back of my throat after a cup of tea. The accompanying hash was terrible! Extremely oily and looks to be in two parts - one beings burnt and unedible and the second being undercooked and unedible. It didn't get eaten and the server never cared to ask if we were good when he took the plate away. Again, a huge pity. Seriously, stick to the self-service buffets or bring your own food in, if you don't get decent attention walking in then turn around and leave - it's not worth it! If the kitchen could make the same effort at all times as when they remade my Navajo Taco, this restaurant would be absolutely amazing but.....care...