Diamond Knot Camano Lodge

This restaurant has changed owners and is now Camano Lodge. The new place is awesome check it out!

Camano Lodge is no longer Diamond Knot.
Although the signs don’t yet reflect it, Diamond Knot Brewery sold the lodge to new owners (approx May 2014). Under Diamond Knot the lodge had consistently good food, great beer, and friendly (though sometimes slow) service. We ate there often, and I would have given it a consistent 4 stars. With the sale, there have been some significant changes to the menu and staff. BE AWARE: Information in reviews prior to May 2014 may no longer apply. To date, the reviews I’ve heard and seen (here and elsewhere) reflect a significant decrease in the quality of food and service. I’ll update this review as I get more information.

We visited a few times for breakfast recently, and we were disappointed. I had especially liked their hash-​browns, but they are now greasier and have a funny aftertaste. I don’t know if they changed the oil they were using or the cooking method, but they were no longer good. Also, the strawberries on the waffle were no longer «fresh cut», but were the frozen syrupy kind instead. The waffle, itself, was still good, however. The bacon is still thick and the flavor was as always awesome, but if you don’t want it over-​cooked, you might want to reiterate this with your server when you order it. Sometimes, they over-​cook it.
This last time, a couple of weeks ago on a Sunday morning, the server was not attentive and service was slow even though they were not terribly busy. No longer thrilled with the strawberries on the waffle, I ordered the French Toast, and it was the best I have had in awhile. We had our toddler grandson with us, and since the server was slow, I had to take him outside when he became impatient. I didn’t let him fuss long at all before I removed him from the area, but someone from the open bar area made a rude comment about hating kids when I walked past toward the exit.
On another note, we visited for dinner a couple of months ago, and the fries were delicious. The burger was pretty good as well. Many dinner items are served on a hotplate on the table, which had deterred us from going there for dinner with our toddler grandson, but we discovered they have other items also.
Recommendations for improvement:
Some of the servers could use a refresher in customer service. Also, please go back to the older way of cooking the hash-​browns, and stop over-​doing the bacon (and the scrambled eggs). The bacon does not need to break into a hundred pieces when eaten. Note: The fresh strawberries were better than the frozen. Also, it would be great to offer flavored creamers for your coffee!

Food, beer and service = great.
My husband, BIL and I came in on a busy Sunday afternoon. The place was packed, but we found a table and were greeted quickly. They were out of some of their beer (the one that we wanted to try), but we settled on the India Pale Ale. I don’t usually like IPA’s, but this one was nice. For food we all shared two orders of the buffalo chicken wings. My husband loves wings, so we eat them a lot. Their portions here are really big. The wings are meaty and have a good flavor — not too spicy, which I was happy for. Between the three of us we couldn’t finish the two orders. Decently priced for the amount you get.
Service was great. Our server was attentive and efficient, despite it being really busy. Typical pub atmosphere. Not divey, but nothing spectacular. I would definitely return if in the area :)

Pretty darn good! Never had bad food or service here and we go here quite often. I like the thai burger… siracha and peanut butter! Sounds crazy but it’s good.

One of the only spots to eat on the island. Decent food, great beer, mediocre service. Sad to see it closing. Hoping something else opens up!

We had a great brunch today at the Diamond Knot. My husband had one of their omelets and I, fish and chips. The cod was fried perfectly and the filets were HUGE. Very good. Plus the fries were awesome. Our waitress was very nice and was on top of our drink refills even though the restaurant was slammed.

This dump has changed so many times and yet it is ALWAYS wrong and bad. Your fresh fish is a soggy greasy mass of grease and funny frozen inside! My mates burger was gross and tasteless. His words not mine. I stinking hard is it to by fresh burger for crap sakes? You too will go down as soon as all the people in Camano are gone or a better place comes along. And frankly that is not a to far off of a stretch to see that is possible. It sucks that there are not great places to eat here !

Excellent food & good service. Great beer, too. It is worth your time to come to Camano Island. You will not be disappointed.

Good place to stop for breakfast or for burgers although for us it was usually burgers and beer when we visit the island. The burgers are better than average although not as good as some burgers like Blazing Onion. Good chowder. Some very good beer.
Be warned that it is one of the loudest places you will visit when it is busy.

Food was pretty good. Fish and chips portions are huge and nicely breaded. The prime rib is very good also

I was really surprised. I have heard mixed reviews from friends. Some really like and others not so much. Our service was great… My friends enjoyed the steaks that they cooked on the hot rocks and I opted for the Chain Saw Burger. The Chainsaw is 2 patties with red hot links, jalapenos & red onions. Covered in habanero pepper jack and served atop lettuce, tomatoes & homemade burger sauce. It was excellent, best burger in Stanwood/​Camano area. The indian pale ale was also good… Definitely going back!

We only ate here once, but the food was great. I ordered the salmon that comes on a hot stone. When I heard that it comes out on a hot stone and you cook the salmon on the store, I was intrigued. It was an interesting experience, and I’m not sure if it was the way the stone cooked the salmon or the seasoning, but the salmon was fantastic. Highly recommend this dish!
Also, waitress was really nice.

If you drive by the Diamond Knot you’ll understand why it stays in business — it’s the only game in town! Located on Camano Island, other than Elger Bay Café down on the south end… this is it. What could be a great place lacks atmosphere, good service and the food is just average if not… some things are simply not that good. But it stays in business because it does a happy hour and the locals need *someplace* to go.
Meanwhile, the prices are on the high side for what you get and the service, that depends on who’s there. The last time the rough looking gal took her time so she could talk to her co-​worker as we sat ready for 8 or 9 minutes for her to come take our order in a place that was nearly empty. We noted that she just didn’t seem to care that much about being there though she did do the minimum.
I got the so-​called steak salad. Hubby got the burger with a fried egg on it. It was floating in grease, majorly. The fries which are said to be the greatest are greasy and over seasoned. Another time I was there I got 2 to-​go orders and my side came with either fries or cole slaw. I ordered the slaw. Guess what? When I got home I got neither. Just an expensive sandwich sans the side.
What passes as ‘good’ food makes me think the locals, which I am currently, don’t get out enough. The location is great, the inside lacks any ambiance and the food is mediocre at best. OH… I did once get their nachos and it was fairly good — much like you would make at home yourself but for the price, the sides of sour cream and guac were pitiful. Won’t be going back.

A friend and I came here yesterday to eat lunch and we can definitely did not impress us. The service was impeccable but unfortunately we couldn’t say the same about the food. We ordered the Fish n chips as well as the rueben. The fish came out beyond dry and over cooked while the rueben came out with an amazing presentation it completely lacked flavor. Although on a better note, we also order the chili and seafood chowdah and that came out amazing… so that might bring us back to try it again…

Finally an «All Around» great restaurant with a little bit of something for all your family and friends that «fits» the Camano Island lifestyle and budget!
Great Food, Great Beer and Great Service! Thanks Diamond Knot!

This is a solid brewpub in a somewhat unexpected location. Camano Island seems far enough removed from big residential and business areas that you wouldn’t guess it has a brewpub. They don’t brew on premise here as far as I know, but they truck in kegs from Mukilteo – this is a full-​blown DK location, with a complete draft lineup of their more common kegs.
They also offer the stonegrill tabletop cookery. This consists of a ceramic tray with a heavy square stone superheated in the center. The hot stone cooks your sandwich fixings, or your steak. This is very much a love it or hate it proposition for many people. I kind of get a kick out of it, especially when I am not in a hurry. If I am on Camano, odds are I am not on a schedule. At the Mukilteo location, there’s somewhat more chance I might be waiting for a ferry or something, so I might think twice about spending the time playing with a stonegrill.
The service here was a bit scattered as they were winding down from a long shift. It was Seat Yourself and we unknowingly grabbed a table in a section that was no longer staffed for the night. We waited for a few things – menus, water refills, etc. She was very nice, and we got repeated apologies, but we did have to flag her down a few times while she did sidework. This is probably not the rule for service here and it certainly wouldn’t stop me from returning.
The food is virtually the same as the Front Street location in terms of flavor and quality and so on. Their draft lineup won’t have the smaller and experimental batches, since they’re farther out from the brew tanks, but the faucets here pour good stuff.
The building itself was clearly put up as a location for a chain-​ish restaurant, and they haven’t done an awful lot to change what was there in the first place. It’s a comfortable and welcoming dining room, though, with pounded copper tabletops and a generally friendly atmosphere. Camano is a great place to get away for a weekend, and it’s great to have this place here.

This is a two part review as we ate breakfast here and came back later that day for happy hour.
Breakfast:
Four of us are staying on Camano Island for a long weekend and my wife had found there website and wanted to try their breakfast so Friday morning we headed over for breakfast.
Biscuits & Gravy: There biscuits are different. When I see biscuits & gravy I think nice fluffy rounds of buttermilk goodness. What they have a rosemary flavored cake with more of a cornbread texture. They might be great but I wasn’t impressed.
The gravy was passable but not excellent. The chicken fried steak could have served a small marine platoon. It needed it’s own plate.
The egg dishes were competently cooked but not outstanding. The bacon was thin sliced and reminded me of your standard grocery store bacon.
On the plus side we had a great waitress that gave us a number of suggestions for places to go on the island.
Happy Hour:
Not being familiar with Diamond Knot beers we ordered a sampler of their finest. Not being a real fan of hoppy beers I didn’t personally care for the IPA’s but they were nicely crafted. The Hef was a little watery and not as good a Widmer. The brown was nice and chocolatey, probably my favorite and I’m not a big brown fan. The lager reminded me of Bud. Not a good thing for a micro brewery.
The happy hour eats had a couple of high points. The steamers are cooked in a Hef based broth that was tasty enough that we ordered more toast for dipping. Of you order the clams do yourself a favor and order extra toast up front so the broth doesn’t get cold waiting for more bread.
The second find was the house chips with honey mustard dip. Both were a 10. The chips and honey mustard dipping sauce are both made at the restaurant. The chips come warm fresh out of the fryer and reDy to be devoured. We ended up over indulging and ordering a second basket of chips. Boy am I going to have to hit the rowing machine next week.
On the downside the waitress we had during happy hour spent so much time talking with another employee in the back that we finally got the bartender to find her so we could pay our bill.

There are not many restaurants on Camano Island, and this is one of the few. I saw the ad for DKCL in the Camano island map, and we decided to have dinner there before heading home.
My boyfriend ordered a pint (I think) of Porter and a sample size of Cream Ale. (FYI: A sample size of beer costs you only $.92.) They were both good, but the Porter was super tasty.
We also ordered veggie quesadilla and hot stone blackened salmon sandwich with cider slaw. The quesadilla was surprisingly tasty with lots of vegges, and the hot stone sandwich was not only delicious but fun to make! You get to cook your own salmon on a slab of sizzling hot stone right at the table. (We recommend you also grill the hoagie on the stone.) The dill sauce was cool and refreshing. The salmon was well seasoned and big enough to share with 2 people. The cider slaw was sweet, tangy, and crunchy all at the same time.
At this point, we were already quite pleased with the quality of the service, food, and atmosphere; then, we (I mean «I») ordered Apple Crisp. When our server lady brought out our (I mean «my») dessert out, I almost fainted. There was a heaping mountain of apple slices with gooey oats and walnut topping along with stout ice cream on another slab of stone (not heated this time). It was certainly not the best apple crisp I’ve ever had; however, the stout ice cream was insanely delectable. I wanted to ask for more of the deliciously stout-​y ice cream… If you order a dessert, you *MUST* get anything that comes with the stout ice cream.
Now I want to order a pint of the ice cream!

I can count, on one hand, the number of times I’ve been to Camano Island. Without using the thumb.
Or the pinky.
You get the point.
So honestly, we didn’t know what to expect when we pulled up to the Diamond Knot Camano Lodge, looking for a little lunch on a dreary Saturday (that later turned sunny). The outside looked cute. The inside looked like an 80s version of a Denny’s turned dining lodge with a TV showing the Kentucky Derby. A scattering of patrons and a handful of waitresses peppered the dining room.
If we judged books by the cover, I’m not sure we would have stuck around. But I was hungry. Really hungry. So we seated ourselves and a few moments later, a waitress showed up with water and menus, pleasant as all get out.
My limited experience with Diamond Knot beer has all been good and I ordered a Scotch Ale, which was… good. Good, solid beer. The boyfriend ordered the Brown which was also good.
We opted for the stone grill sandwiches — the mahi mahi with teriyaki sauce and pineapple for me, the salmon with tartar for him. They come with coleslaw in three different varieties (balsamic, regular, Thai) or, for a dollar more, you can sub out fries. The boyfriend opted for the coleslaw and we decided I’d get the fries so we could split that.
HINT — just pay the dollar more and get fries. The slaw was generic at best — just regular slaw tossed with the dressing of your choice — whereas the fries were a LARGE basket of well-​seasoned fries.
The sandwiches come out with a giant slab of ceramic tile (or something similar) that’s super hot (not good for kids!) and has your fish sitting on top of it. Raw fish. Yup… guess who’s doing the cooking? This is fine and the two of us were content to turn our fish every few moments (and onions and, for me, pineapple) before we added them to the bread/​lettuce/​cheese that was waiting for us. The end result was fish that WE’D cooked ourselves (so no blaming anyone for over-​cooked/​under-​cooked seafood) and a feeling of accomplishment. And pretty darn good sandwiches.
Service was super pleasant and attentive — they were quick to remove the «grills» from the table when we were done, so we weren’t stuck with these giant platters we didn’t need — and we walked out full. The food isn’t awe-​inspiring, but it’s good, solid food with good, solid beer and good, solid service. And for that, four stars.
Will I return? Yes, for more stone grill goodness. Looking forward to doing it all over again, maybe with steak next time.