I completely understand the confusion over the reviews for this fast food stop. It's several different places in one and your impression of it is reliant on which service you availed yourself of on your visit. I've taken advantage of its gas, convenience market, bathroom, diner and taqueria on various trips through. I consider the diner chow to be two-to-three stars and rather expensive relative to the lack of ambiance inside. I've had an uninspired veggie burger, salad and fries here. However! The taqueria food is a solid fours stars and the staff is so pleasant I didn't feel comfortable leaving the review at an overall three stars. (Where's that half star?) I will certainly be back for Mexican food items and recommend it for those.
Review Source:OK so maybe we were hungry, maybe not, but I had an Ortega Burger that was so delicious that I wanted more. Â My friend ordered the Bacon Burger. Â We shared an order of french fries, and were so full we thought we were going to pop. Â Cost was under $20, and that included drinks too. Â The burgers were gigantic, and made to order. I got extra pickles and onions. Meat tasted fresh, and burger bun was slightly toasted. Â I'll be back again in September, and I know where I'm going to eat! Â Oh, and you can eat outside on a picnic table if you want.
Review Source:Not sure why the negative reviews. Our experience was very positive. We arrived in Boonviille hungry after making the long, windy drive over Mountain View Rd from Hwy 1 in Manchester. We stopped here because of the picnic tables outside where we could bring the dogs. They even had a bowl of fresh water for them! We ordered classic cheeseburgers, fries, onion rings and root beer shakes. The service was friendly and quick for made-to-order food. The burgers were perfect - big, soft buns loaded with sesame seeds, a generous beef patty & slice of cheese. The burger was prepared with a nice thick slice of ripe tomato, curly leaf lettuce, onions, pickles & mayo. I added some catsup & mustard. It was delicious. The fries were skinny & crisp, golden and nicely salted. The onion rings were to die for! Â Thick slices of sweet onion, dipped in a thin batter and fried to a deep golden brown. They were crispy outside and tender inside. I'm talking about onion ring perfection. Our shakes were thick & creamy but also straw worthy - just right with the frothy mix of root beer, ice cream and milk. I'm not sure I'll ever be in Boonville again, but I'll remember the burger & onion rings very fondly.
Review Source:Pleasant enough place for a quick stop. I had an omelet, which tasted fine. There were Mexican food items on the menu that might have been more interesting. It's a little pricey for what you get. The place was clean and spacious.
There is a planter out front under the sign. There was a pumpkin about a foot in diameter growing there. At my age, that qualifies as an attraction.
There should be a disclaimer here because this place is quite a unique dining spot. Â Let me start by saying we ate here for a LATE dinner on a Sunday night, about 9:30pm. Â I'm not sure if the actual Redwood Drive-in was closed or not because we found a group of 15-20 Mexicans eating outside around a taco stand under the Redwood Drive-in's deck.
They were grilling authentic Mexican food, taco's, tamale's, enchilada's, etc. Â My wife and I were looking at the standard menu and couldn't decide when the cashier told us they were closing and only had those items. Â We love Mexican food so we ordered five of the spicy pork taco's. Â
They were GREAT! Â This was authentic Mexican food with fresh sauces, cilantro, onions and a fantastic seasoned pork. Â We were very happy and the taco's were only $2 each.
I don't think this is their normal menu items and perhaps it is just a late night deal but if you are ever looking for a late night meal, check to see if they are outside cooking and grab some taco's!
This place is old school weird, but damn if they don't make killer omelette's, burgers and menudo...
get over the way the place looks, the shitty coffee, dirty tables, and drunk mexican guy in the corner having beer and menudo for breakfast and embrace your inner dive-roadhouse self
Hey annoying lady next to me cracking jokes about the place. It's Boonville not Napa, and your fancy sweat outfit and gold jewelry makes you look fat and cheap.
As we left Mendocino and headed back to the Bay Area after a wonderful anniversary weekend, we had only one goal in hitting the Redwood Drive-In for lunch: grab a very quick sandwich so we would beat rush-hour traffic through San Francisco.
Alas, it was not to be. We stopped in and ordered a grilled ham and cheese, and a grilled turkey and cheese. Essentially, slap together a couple grilled cheeses with some meat on them - quick, right? Add in the fact that there was no one in front of us in line, and only one other person in the place that was waiting for food (he had already been sitting at a table when we walked in), and it seemed like we would be out of there in no time.
THIRTY FIVE MINUTES LATER, according to the timestamp on my receipt, they brought out the other guy's food. Five minutes after that, they brought ours. The sandwich was good, but I could have gone back into their kitchen, found everything I needed, and made my sandwich in 10 minutes flat.
I can't even imagine what could have taken so long. There was one woman working the cash register, and one working the grill, and the one on the grill only had three meals to cook. All told, with a bathroom stop the trip took almost an hour. With that amount of time, we could have gone to a respectable restaurant and had a decent meal.
Oh also there are flies everywhere inside the place. They crawl all over you and won't go away even when you constantly brush them off. We kept our sandwiches hidden in the paper they came in while we ate to keep the flies off them.
Stay away!
Excellent breakfast. That's the time to go. After your first cup of coffee it's self serve. They make their own donuts, which, several donuts later, I declare "delicious". Excellent pancakes, good hash browns, well cooked and high quality bacon, and my eggs were done to perfection. I'm not certain, but I believe they bake their own bread. I did have to wait quite a while for the order to be filled. That was a drawback, but given the deliciousness of the breakfast all was quickly forgiven. So when you order a hot breakfast be sure to get the coffee and donut first.
Lunch and dinner are not as wowing. I stopped by recently for a couple of beef, soft tacos and a plate of rice and beans. Perfectly decent food. It was Sunday and a lot was closed. It hit the spot and left no lingering ill effects (i.e., no heartburn and I held everything down during the winding trip back to 101 on Hwy 128). They also had jamaica agua fresca and horchata.
There was a change of ownership a couple of years ago and for a while I would see a barbecue on the weekends. I haven't seen any recently and do not know if they're still doing this. Also, the salad bar from the prior owners doesn't seem to be up and running.
I was only here because the place I was looking for seems to have gone out of business. It was getting late, I was hungry, they looked decent.
And that's about all it was...decent. I got a cheeseburger with fries and paid around $8. Now that's not a bad price for a burger and fries. But not for these burgers and fries! Small portion, not fresh beef, thin fries and I wanted more when I was done. In fact, I thought about stopping for another lunch just 2 hours later.
I found the girl at the counter plenty friendly and she brought my meal to me instead of using my number and calling it out.
They use a special sauce, and that was OK, but I wish I'd known, as mostly I just like mayo and I was not given the option (no mention of special sauce on the menu).
I was not happy with my meal, felt hungry afterwards, and got about the same meal I could have gotten at a fast food place for half the price. If you want to charge this much, have something that makes it worth it: large cut fries, lots of veggies on the burger, a fancy bun, a thick patty or fresh meat. Next time, I'll keep going and try the Mexican place.
I say that it is as good as it gets because of one thing. Â We were returning from our vacation and it began to rain!! It was freezing. Â MY husband pulled over on his bike here and when I saw him he was shaking violently. Â He couldn't ride any further. Â We still had 250 more miles till home. Â
THey let us leave our motorcycle there for over a week till we could go back and get it. Â They were kind and understanding. Â I called to check in and spoke with a wonderfully nice woman who assured me the bike was still safe up by their office.
They let us leave it in their way up by their office!!! Â What a gem! Â We didn't eat here.. just bought hot coffee to warm my husband... but the people are what bring me back to any place I visit... so this is a keeper in my book!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We revisited Redwood Drive-In during our last visit to Mendocino, and we had to ask ourselves, "is this the same place we visited before? Are we sure this is the Redwood Drive-In?"
It seemed like everything changed. Â The place seemed dirtier, they no longer provided service at the front window and had customers order food from the convenience store portion of the building. Â The food took forever, and then when the food came it was soggy and gross. Â The burgers were overpriced ($8+ from $5 just a year ago), and the food was undercooked. Â I couldn't finish my burger and was nauseous afterwards. Â
As you can tell from my previous review in 2007, this place has changed, and not for the better.
I am biased, because I feel as if anyone and everyone would stop here if they are dying of starvation bc nothing else is open, anywhere on this stretch of road when the wines have been traveling through you and the tasting rooms are now closed. I, too, fell prey to the lure of grease and a restroom.
It seemed harmless enough. Diner. Drive-In. High school students getting rowdy outside, people eating dinner...don't mind the fact it looks like a gas station mini mart inside, they have french fries!! How can they go wrong?
Oh, they can. And they did. And I lost a lot of good pinot that night I ate at the Redwood Drive-In. What goes in, must come out...and I spent the majority of  my night in the hotel room hours later technicolor yawning the colors of all varietal rainbows.
Maybe it was my chicken burger. Maybe it was the ranch I was shoveling in my mouth at a rapid pace, but I know the high brow vino I tasted that day didn't make me hurl. Something in the drive-in drove right through me!
Fine place to stop when you just want a quick bite for dinner and everything else is closed in Boonville before you head back to the hotel. Â The veggie foccacia sandwich was surprisingly good, and the seasoned fries hit the spot. Â This looks like the place the local teens hang out at when there's nothing else to do, which I imagine could be often if you're a teenager in wine country . . .
save your money for the wine and have a quick bite at the Redwood Drive-In!
This review might be somewhat biased by the fact that I was FAMISHED when we stopped to eat here on our way to Hendy Woods. It took an intolerable amount of time to get our food (yes, I was starving...but it also was quite a wait for fast food), but it was worth it. Delicious burger. Stunning onion rings. A shake you would kill for (or I would, at least). Worth a pit stop if you're passing through.
Review Source:My love of the Redwood Drive In is unalterably colored by fond memories of chocolate shakes from my childhood, and the more recent  fulfillment of a grilled burger in the afternoon after a morning of framing sheds. Â
To be honest, I have no idea if the owners have stayed the same, but there is something immensely satisfying to me about ordering at that window.
They do what they do, and they do it well. The BLT is always a fan favorite.
One great thing to do is eat there, and watch the traffic go through town, stopping occasionally to get gas, as well as local color.
Every August, a friend and I make a trip to Mendocino (from San Diego) for a music retreat - and this is a 'must stop' part of the yearly pilgrimage.
Their malts and shakes are worth making a detour for - seriously. Made with real ice cream, they are definitely the real deal.
The burgers and sandwiches are also good, as are the fries. Service can be hit or miss, especially if the place is full - sometimes the staff can be overwhelmed.
I believe I have the right place- little diner/general store in the gas station parking lot.
Good, cheap breakfasts, recommended by the clerk at the general store. The greasy bacon and hearty pancake helped cure my massive hangover from the AVBC down  the road the night before. They have your basics- eggs, pancakes, french toast- and the service was quick and pleasant. The donuts looked good too. They open early, around 6am, so you can grub before heading out on a big hike or the drive back to the city.
I grabbed a chocolate malt and seasoned curly fries here. Â An old geezer, very kind, chatting animatedly with his buddy in a wheel chair, looked at me after I squeezed some ketchup into a Styrofoam cup.
"Here, take this one," he said, handing me a new ketchup. Â "You've squeezed all the snot out of that one."
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