High prices and average food in a town with few choices.
A few weeks ago, rather late in the season, we visited Death Valley to see the spring wild flowers. We decided to come back up north through the road that hugs the eastern foothills of the Sierra Nevada, and that’s how we ended up in Lone Pine for the night.
There isn’t much to the little town, but its location is breathtaking. Lone Pine is just one of a plethora of tall, snowy caps that greeted us the next morning and accompanied us much of our way home – if you haven’t driven up 395, I fully recommend it. We arrived in Lone Pine hungry and tired, and went to The Grill simply because we saw it and we were running out of town. I didn’t take any pictures – we were probably just too hungry to think about it.
The Grill is a pretty casual place, with wooden tables and metal chairs in a mostly undecorated dining room. The low lighting at night made it look nicer, however. We sat by the window but this is not a very high-traffic town.
The dinner menu featured sandwiches and burgers, pastas and a sprinkling of other American favorites. The prices were on the high side for this sort of restaurant – but it’s understandable given the remoteness of the location. Still, the quality of the food did not match the prices, even when the quantity did.
I got the Linguini Bolognese ($25), which consisted of a large plate of linguini with a mild meat sauce. I felt that linguini was the wrong pasta to use with this sauce – the noodles were too slippery and did not hold on to the sauce well. The sauce was quite thin and the mince fine enough to slip within the tines of a fork. The flavor was OK, nothing to write home about, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a commercial sauce. The portion was very large – but it still felt like a very overpriced dish.
They offer both a veggie and vegan burger. The former consists of a black bean patty while the latter of a Beyond (or maybe Impossible) burger. My daughter ordered the latter, but the waitress misheard and brought her the Veggie Burger ($20) instead. It was fine, just your typical veggie burger. If you are a vegetarian, you are safe ordering this.
My husband had the Chili Size ($19), a burger smothered with chili. Now, this wasn’t what he expected. He thought it’d just be a chili burger. He should have read the description better as it was, indeed, a burger fully smothered with chili (on top of the bun). It was a total mess but he thoroughly enjoyed it – particularly compared to the “chili” he got for breakfast the following day.
Service was fine, and the experience was overall positive. We’d return, but I wouldn’t order pasta.
The Grill
446 S Main St
Lone Pine, CA
(760) 876-4240
M-Su 9 AM - 8 PM
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