We LOVE Skamania Lodge. Truly. I would wake up here every day if I could. The River Rock seems like the red-headed step child of this operation. The dishes are hit-or-miss. Burger? Hit. Crab cake sandwich? Hit. Truffle fries? Boom! BBQ Chicken Pizza? Sad, sorry, mess. The crust was suspiciously frozen tasting AND looking. The bbq sauce must have come from a bottle labeled "World's Weakest BBQ Sauce". It arrived in varying shades of brown and tan, no color whatsoever. Sprinkle some parsley or green onion on that thing! Â Remember, the EYES eat first. Horrible. Horrible. If you are considering the pizza, RE-consider.
Review Source:My husband and I came into the River Rock around 3:30pm today for a late lunch. We waited by the entrance for someone to seat us. We ended up seating ourselves. We ordered the BBQ chicken pizza and a kids chicken strip meal. When our order arrived the pizza was just a plain cheese pizza with a few pieces of chicken in a really bland honey dijon sauce. We were confused as we ordered a BBQ chicken pizza not a honey dijon chicken pizza. The chicken strip kid meal was great, my son really like the fries and the chicken was not greasy. Also, good portion for a kid meal. After our server brought our pizza he didn't come back for about 30 minutes. I noticed our server was spending quite a bit of time chatting with other co-workers behind the bar. He could see our table from the bar so I guess he assumed he didn't need to check on us. There was a table or two that needed to be cleared and a wet rag lying on another table. When we mentioned to our server that the pizza was not bbq but rather a dijon sauce, he sad it was a Carolina Gold BBQ sauce? Hmmm..I've never hear of it ...but ok. He did take the $16 dollar charge for the pizza off our tab which I thought was nice so I'm adding another star. However, once again he never came back after dropping off the bill. This time I noticed he was once again talking to a co-worker near the bar. My husband stood up and we started to walk toward the bar to pay our tab and then our server magically appeared. This is the second time in the past month we have eaten here and both time the food has been disappointing. It's too bad as we love Skamania Lodge. The next time we stay we'll leave to have lunch or dinner elsewhere. Hopefully the lodge will  hire more professional staff in the future that care more about customer service and cleanliness than chatting with co-workers in the bar.
Review Source:I didn't listen to the reviewers and ate here. Â Our family had the cheese pizza, kids chicken and fries meal, and a salad. Â
The salad seemed like the fancy mixed greens from Costco with some red onions and tomatoes on it. Â Not very impressive. Â
The kids meal had nice sized chicken breasts on it and fries with a crust.  The cheese pizza tasted like a frozen pizza.  It looked beautiful until we ate it.  The crust was soft and the sauce was sweet.  Its good if you want to relive memories of crappy pizza.  To be fair, our 3 year old ate the pizza over 2 days, so it  suits a little kid's starving tastebuds.
Avoid this place and head into town to eat instead.
What do you call a "Special Wild Mushroom Salad" that contains absolutely no wild mushrooms whatsoever? I believe the proper term is a "rip-off." I complained about this to our waitress, expecting she would make an adjustment to our bill, or make a grand apology. Nope...nothing of the sort. She merely said, "Well I'll mention that to our chef." My wife's caesar salad had to have 1/3 of the lettuce cut of of it because it had gone bad. Our bill for two salads and two espresso drinks? $47! Be smart and stay away from this place.
Review Source:Ehh, nothing too special but if you hiked six or so miles before settling down to lunch you would definitely be satisfied. Â They do have good beer on tap and their wood fired pizzas are good, if you order correctly. Â We ordered the Farmer's Market pizza (Roasted Tomatoes, Red Onions, Artichokes, Mushrooms, Goat Cheese, Truffle Oil) and had them add chicken. Â I need my protein and the only other meat-pizza option was BBQ chicken.
The view from the deck is nice, if you can get a table, they are certainly at a premium on weekends. Â Umbrellas will shade you from the sun on a warm summer day.
The bartender and wait staff were average.
The hostess here left a lot to be desired so I hope she was just having an off day or gets some training. Â The conversation went like this:
Us: Â Hello,
Hostess: Â Hi.
Us: Â We'd like to have lunch.
Hostess: Â . . . [silence]
Us: Â Is it open seating or do you seat us? (as we're looking at her to see if she has a name tag, I started to think maybe she didn't work there)
Hostess: Â I can seat you.
Us: Â We'd like to sit on the patio if there is a table available, please.
Hostess: Â Its probably full. . .
Us: Â . . . Should we check?
Hostess: Ohh, uhh, let me look.
Seriously? Â Somebody write her a script. Â Never mind, I'll do it. Â "Hello, welcome to The River Rock. Â Two for lunch today? Â Would you prefer to sit inside or outside?" Now was that so hard?
While I was staying at the Skamania Lodge for a work meeting, I dined in the RIVER ROCK, which is the bar and grill in the hotel. I went there twice actually. Once for a beer, the other for dinner.
They do have a decent selection of premium beers and local selections on tap, so I enjoyed a local IPA and chatted it up one evening. The bar was pretty cool.
But the second night, I tried the four cheese flatbread - and frankly, it sucked. I think it might have been the sauce, but it just tasted plain and boring. Basically, zero soul or love was put into the making of this pizza.
Let's face it there isn't much to do in Stevenson, Washington. So, I'd recommend the River Rock for Beer and Appetizers - but I didn't really like my dinner there.
2.5 Stars
Ate a late lunch here after arriving at Skamania Lodge. Despite the ratio of waiters to tables being 1-to-1, the service was really bad. Our waitress never told us there were lunch specials (I overheard the specials after we ate our meal and someone else sat at the table next to us and had a different waiter). She also was nowhere to be seen throughout our meal, so we couldn't order a cup of soup that my daughter wanted when she tried mine, and it took about 15 minutes before she noticed that we weren't eating our meals.
My daughter ordered the kid mac and cheese. We sent it back. You know how you make a roux with butter and flour and then whisk in cheese? Well this tasted like they forgot the cheese and the flour wasn't cooked down and they dumped this runny, floury sauce over whole wheat pasta tubes. It was amazingly bad. When the waitress finally resurfaced, I asked her if the kitchen tasted their food before sending it out. She seemed irritated by that.
I had a black bean and quinoa burger. It was mushy. I was starving. I ate it anyway.
It was a looooonnnggg lunch, not because we wanted to linger over it but because of the non-existent service. And little did I know that the poorly trained wait staff was to be a repeat at dinner service in the Cascade Room, where again, we got a waitress that seemed to not know what the specials of the day were and didn't care.
It's a shame Skamania Lodge has two such disappointing restaurants on site. It really brought down my opinion of the place.
Ok, so you're at a resort (or in this case lodge but same difference really) and you don't have a ton of choices unless you leave and go into town or whatever. The River Rock is sort of the bar at Skamania Lodge and they offer some pub style foods to accommodate those that want to have some grub or a snack while they're enjoying their day in The Gorge.
Yes, their prices are a bit spendy but this is to be expected because, again, it's a resort type destination. I have yet to stay at a locale like this that doesn't have mildly inflated prices so I won't bother with that angle. It wasn't hyper inflated but a good pint will set you back $8 or so. I had a couple pints of a local beer brewed in Stevenson, WA called "Walking Man IPA" and it was dang tasty. Great floral notes, good hopping, and very smooth. My wife went with mixed drinks to start and they offer all the standard alcohol to make pretty much whatever you want.
We had a half plate of Nachos here for $8 and it was more than enough to get us a good snack in and prepare us for a day of lounging in the sun, hiking around the grounds of Skamania Lodge, and drinking copious amounts of beverages. The Nachos were damn good too, lots of cheese and salsa, and the chips weren't overly salty either.
We came back a couple times throughout the day for a drink and the nice thing is you can grab something and go walk around after paying for it, so you're not confined to the inside of a bar. The service was amazing and the waitress who helped us initially was friendly and prompt and had some good pointers for if we had time to check out anything outside the lodge even (we didn't have enough time to do any real exploring unfortunately) but the experience was great! Good times were had for certain.
I have been coming here the last 6 years due to a work related conference. There is not much to do here in Stevenson, therefore, they have a pretty good market.
The food can be a little pricey for a laid back lounge type of atmosphere but I have found it to be more than tolerable considering the view and the food. I like eating here as opposed to eating in their main kitchen; The Cascade Room, mostly due to pricing.
I have had many things but the ones that stand out are:
App:
Fried Brie, Nachos with Brisket. Those are pretty yummy, I also really like the Middle Eastern platter but I cannot bring myself to pay for hummus, considering it's so simple to make Helen Keller can make it with mittens on.
Entrees:
I really enjoyed their burger, medium with cheese and bacon it does not disappoint. For $17 you can get their grilled wygu flank steak, this is not bad but it may leave you a little hungry if you do not get an app to precede it.
The Drinks:
They are great, especially since I have never had to pay for them, and no it is not because I have sexy legs and I know how to perfectly whisper softly.....
So while in Skamania this is a pretty safe place to frequent, it is close, meaning in right next to the lobby and you can always get a discount if your are staying at the lodge.
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