Red Horse Diner — Restaurant in Ellensburg

On 9/19/22, I visited Red Horse Diner in Ellensburg, Washington for the first time. I had a favorite restaurant that I used to always stop at in Ellensburg on my way back home, but it closed.  I think I may have found my new favorite.

Originally, the site where the diner now sits was a gas station, one car, garage, and home built in 1936. The gas station owners lived on the property as was customary back in the day. The Crossett family purchased the property in 1996 and made it what it is today.

Red Horse Diner is like taking a step back in time to a cool roadside diner.  The walls and ceilings are full of vintage memorabilia from the service station’s past.  There are several different rooms with all kinds of seating arrangements. 

There is also a beautiful outdoor dining area. Even if you choose to dine inside, you must take a walk through the property out back. They have yard games. You can rent it out for private parties.

Red Horse Diner serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  There are lots of options to choose from, but they were best known for their burgers. I ordered The Patty Wagon ($17) - 1/3 lb. Patty with Grilled Onions and Swiss Cheese on Toasted Rye. My server highly recommended the onion rings, so I paid a slight up charge to substitute. It was the best patty melt, and onion rings that I’ve had an ages!

Attached to the diner, is the Nodding Donkey Bar. Happy Hour is every day from 12 PM to 2 PM, and again from 4 PM to 6 PM. On Friday nights, they have live music. Saturday is Karaoke Night.

In addition to being a great roadside diner and bar, Red Horse Diner is an important part of the community, as the back hall wall, which is full of cards, letters, and other acknowledgments, will attest to.

Red Horse Diner is a popular gathering place for a car clubs, motorcycle groups, and families.  Red Horse Diner hosts classic car shows. They have an annual motorcycle event the first weekend in May called The Iron Horse Trail Motorcycle Show, which features live music, motorcycle stunts and competitions. They have a very active Facebook page where they share past and upcoming events. Be sure to check it out.

Be sure to scroll through all of the pictures.  i’ve included photos of the entire property, the back hall wall, and menus for the restaurant and bar.

Highly Recommended!!!

1518 W. University Way Sunday - Thursday 7 AM to 9:30 PM Friday - Saturday 7 AM to 10 PM

Nodding Donkey Bar is open on Monday from 3 to 11 PM. The rest of the week, it’s open from 11 AM to 11 PM. — at Red...

Always looking for something interesting when we are on the road, I researched a dozen places between Ellensburg and Moses Lake, WA, and decided the Red Horse Diner might work out. Here we were on a lame Wednesday evening about 7 pm and found the glowing lights and signage that looked like a hint of yesteryear. We parked, opened the narrow restaurant door and found a compact lil diner, like from a scene out of a Lifetime movie or a Stephen King novel, depending on your point of view. A gal said hello and told us we could sit anywhere on the left side of the place, so we chose a half booth facing not only the parking lot (to keep an eye on our vehicle) but also with a good view of a rodeo program on a tv mounted high up on the wall. Of course, there were also plenty of vintage signs to read, no matter where you might choose to sit! One iced tea, one rocks margarita. Shared some jalapeno poppers, a 409 Burger and some sweet potato fries for a cost of $42. Not cheap, but that's how it is these days. Anyway, the burger was decent, the fries good, the poppers all right. Not gourmet, but real American road food, fried and all that, you know what I mean. Service was good, not intuitive, but good. Booth seating surfaces in dire need of something better than a duct tape fix for the rips in the vinyl. Decor was the best thing because for us oldsters it was memory lane. Enjoyed remembering all the times and places we had seen so many of the signs. Of note: Good parking lot so if you're driving a rig, RV or towing a boat, it might be kinda nice to stop here for the easy parking Fairly clean restrooms. Fun Bulletin boards you can peruse for hours if you feel like it. Overall, yup....

I’ll spare all the details, but what it comes down to is that the server was providing awful service to us and everyone else in the restaurant, and after 50 minutes of no food after ordering (and the two tables next to us who hadn’t been seated when we ordered getting their food and finishing), I asked if our order got lost, to which the server seemed to check in on at first before picking up other tasks and never bothering to come back to let us know. The diners at the other tables were confused and asking us what was up, why they got their food and we were still waiting. After all that, we just packed up and left, since we had been at the table over an hour total at that point with a hungry 3yo. I’d love to be able to tell you “at least the food was good,” but we had no indication we’d ever get a chance to try it.

An example of the awful service from the server: I asked her “what’s in your burger sauce?” To which her actual reply was “I dunno, I didn’t make it.” I asked “ok, so what does it taste like? Mustard? Mayo?” She again said “I dunno.” I don’t know what server in the world thinks those are reasonable answers, but she gave the “I have no idea” answer to another diner as well without offering to each of us to find out the answers to our pretty basic questions. I understand stressful days in customer service but she sure seemed to just kinda operate that way. If she’s not the owner’s daughter or something I don’t see any reason why she should be employed in...