I had a cheeseburger here with everything on it and it was awesome. Â After a 7+ mile hike it totally hit the spot. Â My partner had a deli sandwich and it looked wholesome, simply prepared and satisfying. Â Judging by the drooling glares given to me and my cheeseburger, I doubt the sandwich will be ordered again. Â Don't bother trying the fries as they were a soggy and underwhelming. Â 3 star food bumped to 4 stars due to location and ability to provide instant gratification.
Review Source:If you're in the mood for ice cream and live nearby, this is the place to go! Get a half and half ( half vanilla half chocolate) with sprinkles and you'll be good to go. Not in the mood for ice cream, but still feel like a good burger? Try their grilled chicken sandwich, trust me you won't be disappointed. I'd say that If all else fails, go for their bacon cheese burger. Although delicious, it has an excessive amount of greasy, bacony-cheesy goodness. You have been warned. But seriously, go check out this restaurant, for realzies. Trust me, you won't regret it.
Review Source:It's your basic beach-town run-down snack stand. Â The lines are too long for what you get, but you're really hungry from your big Mount Tam hike or just feel like having ice cream because you're in a beach town, damn it. Â So you overpay and wait, and when you finally get your food, you think, Wow, this isn't as bad as I thought it would be.
Note to you: Â It probably is as bad as you thought it would be, but these run-down snack stands have a cultural hold on us. Â We expect the worst and are pleasantly surprised when we don't find twitching roach legs in our onion rings.
Now, I'll basically argue against everything I've written and say that my milkshake was really good. Â See, even though I knew I was being deceived--and even deceiving myself--I still really thought, for really reals, that the milkshake was really good. Â So there you go.
We hit up Parkside Snack Bar twice for dinner take-out during a coast trip for our daughter's birthday. Â My wife & I each had a bacon cheeseburger, with fries. Â The burger was a solid representation of diner style cow, pork belly, and cheese. Â They have managed to take it up a notch by using high quality, grass fed beef that had great flavor and texture. Â Our kids had the chicken tenders, with fries. Â I never thought I'd be impressed by kid's meal chicken, but this did the trick very much so. Â The chicken was all white chunks of breast meat which still had the "string" consistency of a piece of chicken. Â This would be versus the ground up, shaped into a nugget technique used in making chicken found in a zip loc package in a grocery freezer section. Â The breading was cooked to crispy perfection each time.
Parkside Snack Bar is definitely a recommended spot for a casual, walk up quick meal. Â Despite having a fast food menu, it is fast food done very well. Â The pricing is a tad high, but it was not as high as I would expect of a restaurant within walking distance of a tourist landmark (Stinson Beach) in a rather small town with very limited dining options.
Parkside Snack Bar is a definite must to stop at if you are hiking Muir Woods or just hanging out at Stinson beach. I dont really consider myself a 'hamburger' type of person, but I love the ones here. What I really like about them is that they use grass-fed beef from the local ranches around Point Reyes. Also, they dont use any artificial ingredients in their foods!
The food is a little over priced I suppose, but everyone that works there is so nice and I have had a great experience every time. Cash only!
On our San Francisco trip, we stopped here for a quick snack/light lunch on our way down the coast. I got the tuna melt and split a shake with Nate. It was all ok, but not awesome for the prices. And the shake could have been more chocolaty.
This is THE place to go after school, though - the bus dropped off a bunch of kids while we were there and parents were getting ice cream cones. Cute.
Highly recommend the soft serve. $2.50 for a tall swirl on a regular cone. Doesn't soft serve after a relaxing day at the beach sound great?
They are short on help there. I saw one person working the register and two people working in the back serving up smoothies, shakes, burgers, fries, hot dogs, etc, etc... so we waited for 5-7 minutes. Really not a bad wait, and I was glad they are there--the soft serve really hit the spot!
Sometimes you say, "it is what it is." And people can nod their heads and be like, "yeah." For this place, it is perhaps better to say, "It is where it is."
Also, I wrote a poem 8 years ago after flying through on a mad-dash vagrant-camping trip that wound up through Half Moon Bay, Muir Woods, and on to the Lost Coast and Eureka. Â
Wanna hear it here it goes:
Stinson Beach
General store,
Lagunitas Enthusiasm-
precious secrets,
Simple main road
oh we went too far-
Parkside Food Stop
Surfers rolling in-
Benches in the distance,
low flat level grass,
but no the tailgate
will do in a town
like..
Mame's style burger,
little and without
ordered cheese
..mustard
disney money
away in a salty breeze
Panoramic Highway,
give us back
our sun.
My husband & I were at Stinson Beach yesterday and we stopped by the Snack Bar because our mouths were watering! Â We saw so many people eating ice cream and we couldn't resist! Â Their soft serve ice cream on a cone were very tempting! Â We tried their half-n-half soft serve ice cream and it was sooooooo delicious. We'll definitely be back to tried their chili fries and milk shakes!
Review Source:I first feel in love with this place after a full day of surfing in Bolinas. I heard the milk shakes and soft serve cones were really good, but i couldn't resist the smell of the hamburgers as I waited in line. The menu is really simple and straight forward, which makes choosing a lot more difficult. This simplicity makes you want to order the entire menu! I recommend the fish and chips. If you're a big eater and super hungry, I say you make that two orders. The portions are a bit small, but explosive in flavor. My default meal is the Bacon Cheeseburger and Chill Cheese Fries! Make sure you have a healthy heart, because this will definitely clog your arteries.
The line to order is fairly short, but the wait can sometimes be long. I guess everything bottlenecks once the speedy cashier takes your order. Haha.
After you get your food, you have the option to eat in your car or take it back to the beach. I prefer the the BEACH!
Parkside Snack Bar is the quintessential beachfront snack shack. But unlike other snack shacks I've visited, this one serves up Niman Ranch beef. I haven't tried their burgers yet but did enjoy my $5 grilled chicken sandwich. It's basic - toasted bun, grilled chicken breast and pickles to which I add jalapenos - but satisfying. The fries are skinny and slightly greasy, just how I like. Whatever you order, don't forget to finish it up with a soft serve half & half cone.
Review Source:We stopped here for a milk shake on our way home from a day trip to the beach. I ordered my favorite Half and Half - or Black and White for east coasters. Â There were a bunch of people here, so we were not the only ones with the idea.
It was a good amount of thickness and hit the spot after a day in the sun. I really wanted fries but I had already had them for lunch :) This will definitely be a staple stop for trip to Stinson.
So this is supposed to be the Stinson Beach staple but really that's only because it's basically on the beach. Perhaps my review is soured by the fact that last week when I stopped by after accidentally driving to Petaluma and along the cliffs, sometimes with my eyes closed as I am deathly afraid of heights, and asked very nicely to use the bathroom because I had been staving off my hunger by chugging Diet Cokes, I was instructed to use the portapotty in the adjacent park. If I was a more logical person, I would've just walked back to use the beach bathrooms, but that did not occur to me. Instead I ventured into what has to be the most disgusting portapotty on the face of the earth. After grumpily walking back to the Snack Bar, I ordered the grilled chicken sandwich which was totally adequate, thought it got worse as it literally became a sandwich, thanks to the lovely 90 mph winds on the beach. Three stars because the cooks are super sweet, the ice cream I usually get is delicious, and it's cheap.
Review Source:I remember coming here when I was a kid, way back when....... They always had good food. I was working close by so after work I hit this place. There was a line of people waiting to order when I arrived. I had the bacon cheese burger and fries. The burger was tasty but seemed a bit thin & the cheese was not very melted. The bacon was good and so were the fries.
CASH ONLY and an ATM right next door.
I take my sweets very serious, and understand that when i say this it is no exaggeration...... Best ice cream in the world! After a long day playing paddle ball or football on the beach, go get a chocolate vanilla swirl in a cup with the cone on top. Â Get 2 just for good measure. The Chile cheese fries are also pretty delish as well, although they contain more grease than the hair of John Stamos.
You do get the pretentious beach surfers working there though. You only have to converse with them for a couple seconds fortunately.
This is the little snack bar just behind Stinson Beach.
Post hike refuel: Â we loitered out front for thirty minutes waiting for our food to arrive. Â Ended up with watery milkshakes and fish and chips (two tiny pieces for $8). Â
Yet somehow their ice cream is the perfect accompaniment for a day at the beach. Â I'd just stick with that.
This is a must when you're spending a day at with the beach with the kinder set. Â Not only do they offer grilled cheese on whole wheat but there is a park and playground to consume such kid cuisine right across the street. Â The ice creams come from a soft serve machine and even the smalls are large enough to make the little ones swoon. Â I'm not a fan of their fries but if you ask nicely they'll put a yummy slice of cheese on the grilled chicken sandwich -- yum!
Review Source:You are what you are. A greasy and fatty food nook. Choices in Stinson Beach is pretty slim. You could settle for the overpriced, froo froo par food they have at one of the few 'real' restaurants here. But why shell out 10 bucks for a hamburger when you can walk down the block to this place where you can get a burger, some chili cheese fries, and ice cream for the same price? If you do want decent food, head next door to the restaurant that been getting 4 stars; just avoid the other 2 places on the block. Yeah so you may feel like a fatty eating at the snack bar, but thats some running and surfing along the beac will fix that up in a  sec.
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