Cedar House Restaurant

We decided to go to Cedar House Restaurant instead of the restaurant at our hotel based on reviews. I am SO glad we did! Our waitress, Sandy, was so polite and quick to serve us. Our drinks stayed topped off and we received our food quickly! The chicken was very moist and flavorful. They have a diner that is connected to the same building under a different name. They have a full bar and other menu options. If we come back to Yosemite in the future, we will definitely eat here again! 10/10

Ayyoub HAYOU

Amazing food we had and great/fast service! Not sure about the bad reviews but we really enjoyed our food :)

Carla Risco Vera

The food was delicious. The service was excellent, and the salad bar is a 10/10. I recommend the burger with fries and the Blackberry Trail Margarita.

Laura Kron

We loved it. The food was awesome The prime rib was the best my husband said he had had in years. The only thing was I asked for a desert surprise for my husband as it was our anniversary and we never received it.

Shawna Rehme

We decided to go to Cedar House Restaurant instead of the restaurant at our hotel based on reviews. I am SO glad we did! Our waitress, Sandy, was so polite and quick to serve us. Our drinks stayed topped off and we received our food quickly! The chicken was very moist and flavorful. They have a diner that is connected to the same building under a different name. They have a full bar and other menu options. If we come back to Yosemite in the future, we will definitely eat here again! 10/10

A Brown

Great, cozy restaurant in the resort. Was really impressed with the quality of the food. I had the chicken under a brick and it was flavorful and cooked well. The portion was very generous. We also had the churros for dessert—what a delicious treat! The staff was friendly. We had a large group and they were very accommodating and experienced. Would definitely eat there again.

The Cedar House Restaurant offers good food and a nice atmosphere. The wings and fries are awesome, and while the pulled pork doesn’t seem freshly made (more like bought and heated up), it still tastes very good. For the kids, the big surprise was the soup — they absolutely loved it! Service was friendly and attentive, and the restaurant also has a bar, which is a nice addition. All in all, a recommended place to eat.

The food was good- the service was slow & server was uninterested in anything we needed pre paying our bill. All he cared about was his tip. Sad to say 👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻

We stayed here during the shoulder (off) season. As such the breakfast options were limited. What they had was done perfectly off, see photos.

Definitely wasn’t as bad as the reviews were making it, was a pretty good place for the location, dishes were big and filling, and the servers came around often and were kind. You can get in at 8:30, and eat until you’re finished, they didn’t seem to be too strict on closing.

Sven Sommerfeld

The Cedar House Restaurant offers good food and a nice atmosphere. The wings and fries are awesome, and while the pulled pork doesn’t seem freshly made (more like bought and heated up), it still tastes very good. For the kids, the big surprise was the soup — they absolutely loved it! Service was friendly and attentive, and the restaurant also has a bar, which is a nice addition. All in all, a recommended place to eat.

Karlan Stephenson

The food was good- the service was slow & server was uninterested in anything we needed pre paying our bill. All he cared about was his tip. Sad to say 👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻

Katie Kay

We stayed here during the shoulder (off) season. As such the breakfast options were limited. What they had was done perfectly off, see photos.

Joel M

Definitely wasn’t as bad as the reviews were making it, was a pretty good place for the location, dishes were big and filling, and the servers came around often and were kind. You can get in at 8:30, and eat until you’re finished, they didn’t seem to be too strict on closing.

Food is a 5, Bar is a big ZERO! Food as expected for a simple cafe. Good portions, good food, fast service. The pulled pork nachos were a great start, good burger, good fish tacos. Friendly service. But the Bar, ugh HORRIBLE BARTENDER. Lots of reviews about how she doesn't care a single iota about her job or serving customers is 100% spot on. She was pissed she had to change a keg for the customer in front of me. Pissed the phone rang which she answered as she cashed out the customer in front of me but then didn't even acknowledge my presence as she proceeded to talk on the phone to an obviously personal call (yeah the one she was pissed when it rang). After 3-5 minutes of being ignored I gave up on having a beer with my meal. Literally the entire time I stood there and then started to walk away she never looked once.

Loud and chaotic. The service is VERY slow. Fifteen bucks for a patty melt is a little ridiculous. No coke products (only Pepsi). Bar drinks aren’t bad, and the bartender is a sweetie.

Wendell Ricketts

Loud and chaotic. The service is VERY slow. Fifteen bucks for a patty melt is a little ridiculous. No coke products (only Pepsi). Bar drinks aren’t bad, and the bartender is a sweetie.

Robin Mullins III

Food is a 5, Bar is a big ZERO! Food as expected for a simple cafe. Good portions, good food, fast service. The pulled pork nachos were a great start, good burger, good fish tacos. Friendly service. But the Bar, ugh HORRIBLE BARTENDER. Lots of reviews about how she doesn't care a single iota about her job or serving customers is 100% spot on. She was pissed she had to change a keg for the customer in front of me. Pissed the phone rang which she answered as she cashed out the customer in front of me but then didn't even acknowledge my presence as she proceeded to talk on the phone to an obviously personal call (yeah the one she was pissed when it rang). After 3-5 minutes of being ignored I gave up on having a beer with my meal. Literally the entire time I stood there and then started to walk away she never looked once.

Just don't go! After looking at the menu I went to the counter to order. The waitress was completely lost, confusing drinks for the other people at the bar, passing in front of me without acknowledging me and after few minutes she took my order. When she put it at the machine being her, she already forgot what she wrote down. She asked me to pay straight away which I did and she was confused when giving me my change. After the 2nd time counting, I was counting with her and told me aggressively to not count at the same time. Why not counting my change when she can't do it in the first place? When the meal arrived, she couldn't remember for which table? We were the only table having dinner. Not that difficult to guess... The food itself was just discusting! First time ever I don't finish what I ordered (nachos) After this experience,I understood why the restaurant was empty, and people were using the microwave at the reception to eat in their room! If you want to enjoy a good meal and a good service close by, go to the Yosemite View Lodge. We went there the second night. They have a pizzeria, a lounge and a restaurant with good service, good food and drinks. They even offered a complementary salad buffet when you are waiting for your meal. They are full and even people waiting to be seated...

Everything about this place is a disgusting disappointment but I guess when you are the only restaurant around you can serve anything and get away with it. We were the first seated for dinner and you would expect fresh, hot food to come out of the kitchen. The soup was curdeled and barely warm. Served with 3 packets of complementary destroyed crackers. Our meals came out on dirty plates and looked like something that would be served to inmates. Also, not hot at all. My husband ordered the "steak" and when he tried to mask the flavor with A1 sauce, it poured out like water. Keep in mind, this garbage is all way over priced! The meat was like road kill, the service was provided by people that clearly don't want to be there and neither did we. Trust me, drive down the road and get a snack at a gas station. You'll thank me!

If I could give this place 0 stars I would. This place is truly a once in a lifetime experience, as in I will never be returning. Have you ever walked into a restaurant and immediately realized that they gave up less than halfway through? That’s here. The chandeliers on average had two lightbulbs out. The rest of the room was lit by a light over each table, some warm lights and some harsh fluorescent lights. You’d think with this wonderful atmosphere they’d want to liven it up a bit by having some music playing to distract you. Nope. It was so silent in the restaurant you could hear an ant fart. The restaurant was relatively full and everyone looked so uncomfortable. It didn’t help that two servers assistants were standing in the corner of the restaurant just staring at everyone. My girlfriend and I waited to be seated for a few minutes and were escorted to a table with a hanging overhead light that was so bright that I was waiting for Batman to pop out from behind me, slam my head on the table and say “You wanted me? Here I am.” We waited for probably about 10 minutes for the one waitress (during peak Yosemite season) to come to our table. We ordered drinks and that was a mistake. “The River” tasted like blue curacao mixed with hand sanitizer. “Yosemite Sunrise” was garnished with a dirty orange. I mean there was literal dirt on the orange. When the waitress came back I ordered the chicken nachos to go. At this point we had been in the restaurant for at least 30 minutes and were ready to leave. The waitress responded “nachos to go” I corrected her and said “the chicken nachos to go” she wrote it down and walked away. The food came out about 30 minutes later. What do you think was in my little box of joy? I’ll give you a hint. Not the chicken nachos. What my box contained was a Shakespearian tragedy, the likes of which I was wholly unprepared for. There, laying before my eyes were probably two handfuls of store bought tortillas chips drowning in bowling alley cheese and two spoonfuls of canned refried beans, and would you believe me if I said there not a shred of chicken in sight? I begrudgingly picked up a chip. To my horror it was floppy. The chips, or as the Brit’s call them “crisps” were the opposite of crisp. I took the uncrisp crisps back to my room and ate them. Not because they were good but because they cost $17. I have never felt so personally attacked by a restaurant. I wasn’t expecting Mastros, I wasn’t even expecting Red Lobster, but at least give McDonalds. After looking at other reviews I guess there’s a free salad bar that comes with your meal but nobody told us and it was nowhere on the menu, so that’s sick. Anyway, if you’re ever in Yosemite/El Portal and feel like being disappointed on every level, The Cedar House has you covered.

The restaurant comes across as a reasonably nice restaurant when you first walk in. On the walls there are high-quality pictures from various parts of Yosemite, the waiters are well dressed and the chairs and tables (which there are quite many of) look nice. For these reasons the $28 asking price for the meal of the day, salmon with teriyaki sauce, didn't surprise me too much. The first red flag came when most of the tables in the restaurants were empty. In fact, only one of perhaps fifty tables was in use. This was around 6pm, and at this time of day you'd expect at least some guests. However, this in itself doesn't have to mean much. What really raised my eyebrowes, was when the waiter - after taking our orders - pointed to a salad bar a few tables away from us, and said we could take whatever we wanted, as it was "included". I was concerned, because I thought, "is this what we are paying so much for"? For context, I had a chicken breast for $28, and the person I was there with had the $32 angus steak (apparently the prices have risen since the menu was published on here). We were there to eat what we, because of the price, expected to be some good food, not some salad buffet we didn't ask for. I became even more concerned when the salad bar basically consisted of salad ingredients on one end and dressing on the other. You almost had to be a chef yourself in order ot make anything good out of it. Not only that, the broccoli served in the salad bar was completely raw and cut in large pieces, making it almost impossible to eat. The raw broccoli also spoke to the low effort that was put into the bar, that we - keep in mind - had to pay for (even if we didn't know that was what we were doing at first). This was worrying, but I thought the meal was still redeemable, if the actual dishes we ordered were good. However, they weren't. Half of my plate was filled with mashed potatoes, the sauce, which they called "BBQ-sauce", tasted so much like ketchup, that I suspect it was ketchup. The chicken - although it was actually reasonably crispy, so that was nice - was dry. And to top it all off the side of vegetables were close to unseasoned and looked like something which would be charming if a twelve year old made it - a colourfull mix of carrots, green beans and broccoli (this time actually cooked), but it looks unappealing and tastes almost nothing. You expect more from a restaurant, especially at this price. The final straw, which made me realize how far gone this restaurant is, was when the waiters at no point cared to ask how the food was. To any normal restaurant, feedback is the way to improvement or, at least, the way to make sure standards aren't dropping. However here, the customer's experience clearly wasn't of importance. They wanted $72 for the meal (we also had two ice tea's, in addition to the entre's), though, although it took them unreasonably long to give us the receipt after we asked for it. To close off this already way too long review: The food would be acceptable at a lower cost and if the restaurant presented itself as more of a casual place to stop on your drive - not a "nice" restaurant with dressed up waiters, high-quality pictures on the wall and prices to match that. When the food quality is subpar and most of the seats are empty, what is "nice" just comes across as pretentious. All in all, when the waiters don't even care to ask how the food is/was, the restaurant comes off as low-quality and cheap (although it is expensive), while the staff seem like they don't care.

The 24$ breakfast here is worse than a motel 3 continental breakfast. The food was not even warmed. For charging 24$, the least they could do is purchase warming lamps. As tempting as it may be, do NOT try it. Go get a frozen meal inside the park.

Worst place i ve ever eaten. My cocktail was curdled, the food was awful, no flavour, definitely not fresh and overpriced. No care at all, it seems like the fact that there is very little around in restaurants, they care serve what they like and get away with it. The service was lack lustre. I would not recommend this place at all.

Ocean

Just don't go! After looking at the menu I went to the counter to order. The waitress was completely lost, confusing drinks for the other people at the bar, passing in front of me without acknowledging me and after few minutes she took my order. When she put it at the machine being her, she already forgot what she wrote down. She asked me to pay straight away which I did and she was confused when giving me my change. After the 2nd time counting, I was counting with her and told me aggressively to not count at the same time. Why not counting my change when she can't do it in the first place? When the meal arrived, she couldn't remember for which table? We were the only table having dinner. Not that difficult to guess... The food itself was just discusting! First time ever I don't finish what I ordered (nachos) After this experience,I understood why the restaurant was empty, and people were using the microwave at the reception to eat in their room! If you want to enjoy a good meal and a good service close by, go to the Yosemite View Lodge. We went there the second night. They have a pizzeria, a lounge and a restaurant with good service, good food and drinks. They even offered a complementary salad buffet when you are waiting for your meal. They are full and even people waiting to be seated...

Kim Stuckey

Everything about this place is a disgusting disappointment but I guess when you are the only restaurant around you can serve anything and get away with it. We were the first seated for dinner and you would expect fresh, hot food to come out of the kitchen. The soup was curdeled and barely warm. Served with 3 packets of complementary destroyed crackers. Our meals came out on dirty plates and looked like something that would be served to inmates. Also, not hot at all. My husband ordered the "steak" and when he tried to mask the flavor with A1 sauce, it poured out like water. Keep in mind, this garbage is all way over priced! The meat was like road kill, the service was provided by people that clearly don't want to be there and neither did we. Trust me, drive down the road and get a snack at a gas station. You'll thank me!

Amisha Shah

Worst place i ve ever eaten. My cocktail was curdled, the food was awful, no flavour, definitely not fresh and overpriced. No care at all, it seems like the fact that there is very little around in restaurants, they care serve what they like and get away with it. The service was lack lustre. I would not recommend this place at all.

Noah M.

If I could give this place 0 stars I would. This place is truly a once in a lifetime experience, as in I will never be returning. Have you ever walked into a restaurant and immediately realized that they gave up less than halfway through? That’s here. The chandeliers on average had two lightbulbs out. The rest of the room was lit by a light over each table, some warm lights and some harsh fluorescent lights. You’d think with this wonderful atmosphere they’d want to liven it up a bit by having some music playing to distract you. Nope. It was so silent in the restaurant you could hear an ant fart. The restaurant was relatively full and everyone looked so uncomfortable. It didn’t help that two servers assistants were standing in the corner of the restaurant just staring at everyone. My girlfriend and I waited to be seated for a few minutes and were escorted to a table with a hanging overhead light that was so bright that I was waiting for Batman to pop out from behind me, slam my head on the table and say “You wanted me? Here I am.” We waited for probably about 10 minutes for the one waitress (during peak Yosemite season) to come to our table. We ordered drinks and that was a mistake. “The River” tasted like blue curacao mixed with hand sanitizer. “Yosemite Sunrise” was garnished with a dirty orange. I mean there was literal dirt on the orange. When the waitress came back I ordered the chicken nachos to go. At this point we had been in the restaurant for at least 30 minutes and were ready to leave. The waitress responded “nachos to go” I corrected her and said “the chicken nachos to go” she wrote it down and walked away. The food came out about 30 minutes later. What do you think was in my little box of joy? I’ll give you a hint. Not the chicken nachos. What my box contained was a Shakespearian tragedy, the likes of which I was wholly unprepared for. There, laying before my eyes were probably two handfuls of store bought tortillas chips drowning in bowling alley cheese and two spoonfuls of canned refried beans, and would you believe me if I said there not a shred of chicken in sight? I begrudgingly picked up a chip. To my horror it was floppy. The chips, or as the Brit’s call them “crisps” were the opposite of crisp. I took the uncrisp crisps back to my room and ate them. Not because they were good but because they cost $17. I have never felt so personally attacked by a restaurant. I wasn’t expecting Mastros, I wasn’t even expecting Red Lobster, but at least give McDonalds. After looking at other reviews I guess there’s a free salad bar that comes with your meal but nobody told us and it was nowhere on the menu, so that’s sick. Anyway, if you’re ever in Yosemite/El Portal and feel like being disappointed on every level, The Cedar House has you covered.

Even Ja

The restaurant comes across as a reasonably nice restaurant when you first walk in. On the walls there are high-quality pictures from various parts of Yosemite, the waiters are well dressed and the chairs and tables (which there are quite many of) look nice. For these reasons the $28 asking price for the meal of the day, salmon with teriyaki sauce, didn't surprise me too much. The first red flag came when most of the tables in the restaurants were empty. In fact, only one of perhaps fifty tables was in use. This was around 6pm, and at this time of day you'd expect at least some guests. However, this in itself doesn't have to mean much. What really raised my eyebrowes, was when the waiter - after taking our orders - pointed to a salad bar a few tables away from us, and said we could take whatever we wanted, as it was "included". I was concerned, because I thought, "is this what we are paying so much for"? For context, I had a chicken breast for $28, and the person I was there with had the $32 angus steak (apparently the prices have risen since the menu was published on here). We were there to eat what we, because of the price, expected to be some good food, not some salad buffet we didn't ask for. I became even more concerned when the salad bar basically consisted of salad ingredients on one end and dressing on the other. You almost had to be a chef yourself in order ot make anything good out of it. Not only that, the broccoli served in the salad bar was completely raw and cut in large pieces, making it almost impossible to eat. The raw broccoli also spoke to the low effort that was put into the bar, that we - keep in mind - had to pay for (even if we didn't know that was what we were doing at first). This was worrying, but I thought the meal was still redeemable, if the actual dishes we ordered were good. However, they weren't. Half of my plate was filled with mashed potatoes, the sauce, which they called "BBQ-sauce", tasted so much like ketchup, that I suspect it was ketchup. The chicken - although it was actually reasonably crispy, so that was nice - was dry. And to top it all off the side of vegetables were close to unseasoned and looked like something which would be charming if a twelve year old made it - a colourfull mix of carrots, green beans and broccoli (this time actually cooked), but it looks unappealing and tastes almost nothing. You expect more from a restaurant, especially at this price. The final straw, which made me realize how far gone this restaurant is, was when the waiters at no point cared to ask how the food was. To any normal restaurant, feedback is the way to improvement or, at least, the way to make sure standards aren't dropping. However here, the customer's experience clearly wasn't of importance. They wanted $72 for the meal (we also had two ice tea's, in addition to the entre's), though, although it took them unreasonably long to give us the receipt after we asked for it. To close off this already way too long review: The food would be acceptable at a lower cost and if the restaurant presented itself as more of a casual place to stop on your drive - not a "nice" restaurant with dressed up waiters, high-quality pictures on the wall and prices to match that. When the food quality is subpar and most of the seats are empty, what is "nice" just comes across as pretentious. All in all, when the waiters don't even care to ask how the food is/was, the restaurant comes off as low-quality and cheap (although it is expensive), while the staff seem like they don't care.

Daniel

The 24$ breakfast here is worse than a motel 3 continental breakfast. The food was not even warmed. For charging 24$, the least they could do is purchase warming lamps. As tempting as it may be, do NOT try it. Go get a frozen meal inside the park.