Mammoth Dining Room — Restaurant in West Yellowstone

There are not a lot of options for dining in Yellowstone National Park. Usually each area has a cafeteria style place and a sit down dinner in one of the historic inns. Atmosphere always gets a plus due to the historic nature of the dining room. The food typically is ok due to the fact it's provided by the same food service company that sells you ice cream in the general store.

Each area in the park has a different inn and a different style of menu - cowboy/bbq for example at Roosevelt. This one is "chop house" style. I'm not a fan of the old fashioned "chop house" style of restaurant. It seems dated. I kind of like a chef created dish with accompanying sides. Some times its the sides that make me order a dish.

Here everything is ala cart. You get what ever protein you order on a big white plate which looks rather empty. Every thing else has to be order separately. If you want a starch and a veggie, and maybe a salad, everything starts to add up quick.

On the plus side, you can share with your companions and sample various things. We had the salmon which was ok but a bit dry. Side dishes were good - loaded baked potato, mushroom stir fry.

For the budget conscious you can order from the "starter menu" and share. For example the sliders.

Beer and cocktails are available but only the wine list was provided at the table. We had to ask for a beer list.

Another plus for this place is that in nearby Gardiner, all the restaurants seem to serve the same standard tourist fare - burgers and pizza so at least this place had a more varied menu.

Recently renovated, the place takes on an Art Deco look. It could use some more texture. Seems a bit plain for an historic dining spot. Nice views from the windows - plus for seeing a double rainbow from our table over the mountains.

Let's just say, you are not going to a National Park for the dining. The menu has to appeal to the widest range of tourists. The chef is someone designing the menu in some boardroom in some city. It...

My boyfriend and I stayed in Yellowstone from May 16-20th and the entire park was amazing apart from everything the guest services had a hand in. But that’s all a long story not related to this dining experience. We booked a reservation at 6pm through the Canyon Lodge front desk, before out reservation we wanted to go on a hike and even rushed on our hike to make it to this reservation in time only to be told that they don’t even take reservations. Ok well that’s interesting. But they got us in within 15 minutes so no big deal. Our server was super sweet I ordered the roasted chicken and my boyfriend ordered the hanger steak cooked medium. We get our food and his steak was too red for his liking and he nicely asked the server if she could have them throw it back on for him. He’s picking at my food because he’s starving and once his steak comes out again it’s still way too red. This time the server comes over again and takes a look at it and goes “oh wow that’s still really red. Ok let me grab my manager.”. During all of this he is only eating the sides of roasted veggies and some of my chicken because he does not like rare steak so he wouldn’t even take a bite of this. Then after a long time we’re really confused because a manager hasn’t come over and talked to us, I’m basically done with my food, and my boyfriend hasn’t eaten. Our server, who was super sweet during all of this, says they’re going to offer us a free dessert. And my boyfriend says “ok and the steak is going to be comped too right?” And she says “umm let me go check with my manager.”. Again, my boyfriend didn’t take a single bite of this Steak just picked at the sides, we didn’t speak to a manager through out all of this he just put this on the server to deal with, and my boyfriend just didn’t get to eat dinner. They ended up comping the steak. Really not a great experience. Poor communication all over the park, poor leadership at the Mammoth...

They get two stars ONLY for the amazing view of wildlife. Our server admittedly knew nothing about sourcing of menu items, which surprised me since Mammoth Dining Room touts their "4 Star Green Restaurant Certification" so proudly. We started with the "Smoked Lake Trout Plate". We ordered this because we know Lake Trout is an invasive species, and we like to support vendors that try to eradicate invasive species. Here is the problem, the menu states the lake trout is "farm raised". I could not help but laugh because any angler knows that Lake Trout aka Mackinaw are deep water fish that are impossible to "farm". I found out that they source the fish from "Native Fish Keepers" from the Flathead Lake in NW Montana. I pulled up the website and asked to speak to the chef. I showed him that the website clearly says "wild-caught", and asked why the menu says "farm raised". His response was, "wow, I didn't know it was wild caught, and I also didn't know the menu said farm raised". I explained why this minor detail mattered, but he didn't seem to care very much. I emailed Chef Mike Dean that evening to address this error. Chef Dean was clearly too busy to respond. While this may seem like a minor detail, it is not. It exemplifies the credibility of a location, the staff, and moreover, the corporation. I stopped in two weeks after I brought this to the attention of Chef Alex, and Chef Dean, and the menu STILL says farm raised, despite them admitting the error. After our "farm raised lake trout" plate 🤣 we had a Bison Tenderloin, ordered medium rare, presented to us at medium well. I'm curious now if that was Bison or if it was in fact a...