Wayfinder Restaurant — Restaurant in Estes Park

Beautiful food and beautiful views from our high top on the shaded patio! In fact, over a weekend we ate at Wayfinder 3x for breakfast, once for lunch and once for dinner. It's that good, and the menu is that varied and extensive! We tried quite a few dishes and were delighted to discover a new excellent restaurant in Estes. To summarize: Service: The service was prompt, accurate, and pleasant every time. Atmosphere: We were able to eat outdoors all but once, and found it very pleasant -- breezy, with beautiful views. Price: A bit high, but the quality of the ingredients, preparation, and presentation merit the price. Food: -Breakfast tacos: A- well seasoned and nicely presented, wrapped in soft GF corn tortillas and served with excellent breakfast potatoes. A bit less spicy than I'd like. That could be remedied with a simple side of salsa. -Strawberry banana waffles with whipped cream and pecans: A+ my daughter's eyes rolled back in her head in delight at the first bite! She declared they were the best waffles she had ever tasted, and not too sweet. -French toast: A This is what French toast is supposed to taste like! -Farmer's omelette: A Really nice balance of sun-dried tomatoes, spinach, and mild goat cheese, with their excellent breakfast potatoes. -Salad with blueberries: A Beautifully presented and fresh! -Salmon salad with blueberries, cranberries, and mild goat cheese: A+ The salmon was perfectly cooked, and the ingredients complemented each other deliciously. It was a generous portion and was also wonderful as a cold leftover. Elk burger: A- my partner, who likes her meat well done and dry, was very happy with it. (Elk is like that, and the server was careful to recommend cooking it less, for those who like their burger juicy.) The sweet potato fries were also tasty. Turkey wrap: A+ A healthy serving of veggies, and a flavorful sauce with perfectly done meat. Another dish that was declared best ever. Pasta with pesto cream sauce, asparagus and chicken: A Very rich and nicely seasoned. Trout with rajas and Yukon mashed potatoes: B- This is the only dish I tried at WayFinder that I would NOT order again. It was only fair. A shame because I adore trout. I would recommend developing a new recipe, maybe with a Veracruz sauce? The trout was only seasoned with pepper, breaded and fried stiff, and the rajas were sort of spicy but didn't complement the fish well, and mashed potatoes are odd with trout. Sauvignon Blanc - Excellent! In looking over other patron's reviews, I was struck by how many times I read "best ever version of this dish." That's unusual, and should make the chef proud. This outstanding new restaurant deserves to be enjoyed by visitors to Estes for...

To make a long story short! This place is horrible! I should have taken the fact that it was dead here when there was a event happening in the area as a hint.

Even with it being not busy at all the service was super slow! Just asking for napkins took forever. Asking for anything took forever. It's almost like they had to run to the gas station across the street for ranch or napkins or anything we asked for.

Also the server was horrible! My wife asked for a half sandwich half soup and asked for the soup of the day which was broccoli and cheese. The sandwich looked like they grabbed the meat out of the bottom of a barrel and it was just left overs. The lady told us that they might be out of broccoli and cheese and she'd let us know.....Never let us know a thing! Just came back with a completely different soup. Tomato something. My wife asked if she could just have the other half of the sandwich if they are truly out of the soup SHE ASKED FOR! They came back with a different sandwich. Mind you her first one she barely even wanted to eat as it was dry and disgusting. The second one she took a bite and said she couldn't eat it anymore it was nasty. So we asked to replace the half sandwich with onion rings. Which also took forever in a empty restaurant. Than this lady tried charging us separately for the onion rings even though it was the replacement side for the "i'll go check" soup and HORRIBLE sandwich! At this point we were done with this horribly slow and bad server! So we asked for a manager and after a back and forth conversation we finally got her to take off the onion rings.

Side notes....I was charged an extra $3 just to have crispy instead of grilled chicken in my wrap that also was not good but I was hungry and wanting to get moving. Also the manager clearly didn't care about customers. She just kept staring at us even though we clearly were having a problem with her employee and she didn't feel the need to come ask if we needed help? What is the point of a manager on duty if you just sit around staring at tables having problems?

We truly wish we would have just stayed at YMCA and gone into the over crowded loud buffet. Serving ourself would have been faster and better and cheaper!

Side side note!- I ordered 4 pizzas and a cheese bread and 3 brownie treats AND 2 mac n cheeses for $25 cheaper than this place with how little we had here! $80+ for the crap service and food we got! My wife rarely tells me to not leave a tip! But what part of this review said this lady...

I recently visited this restaurant and was very disappointed by their misleading “Winter Specials” flyer and the rude attitude of the manager, Jesus.

The flyer advertised two specific items priced at $16.99 and $14.99, listed alongside other discounted menu items. Next to these two items, it stated “Buy One Get One 50% Off Every [weekday].” None of the other items included this "BOGO" deal, but all items (Including the ones with the BOGO deal) had prices aligned on the far-right side of the flyer, which made it appear that the only the BOGO offer applied on those weekdays, and that the listed prices ($16.99 and $14.99) were the regular sale prices for that "Winter Special" deal.

In reality, those prices were the post-discount prices after applying the “buy one, get one 50% off” offer. The actual full price of these dishes was much higher (around $30 for fish and chips, $40 for steak). However, the flyer did not clarify this anywhere, nor did it list the original, non-discounted prices. This misleading formatting caused confusion at our entire table (after we received our checks, of course).

When we asked the manager, Jesus, to clarify the pricing, he was condescending and dismissive, saying, “No place would have food items for that price,” as if we were foolish for misunderstanding. Rather than helping, his attitude only made the situation worse. I worked as a restaurant manager for years. The goal of a manager is to remedy customer complaints, not attempt to argue with the said customers.

He stated that we were the first people to complain in the one month this "Winter Special" was active, but that's probably because Estes Park doesn't get a lot of tourists within these months. If there were more traffic in this time, I believe there would be many confused patrons, like my party of four. We relented in attempting to further the complaint with Jesus due to his rude demeanor, and simply paid the overpriced charges we were given.

The deceptive advertising, poor communication, and rude service made this a disappointing dining experience. Our server was nice, at least. She was very pleasant! The food itself was mediocre at best, and I would never...