Nelda’s Diner

This is one of the best cafes in America!!! I drive over the road for a living so I’ve had a bunch to compare with this place. The food and service are unmatched!!! That matched with great music and all the locals, you don’t want to miss this place if you come to or thru Lake Isabella, CA!!!

We love Neldas, been going here for many years before we moved to the lake and now we frequent! The onion rings are amazing, perfect amount of batter to onion. I’m also obsessed with the ranch, it’s thick and perfect! I’m a burger person and they do not disappoint. They are juicy, fresh and the toppings on the different burgers are always good! Price is reasonable especially for the quality! We usually leave with a shake to go and there is two pages full of shake options, if your here for a vacay this is a great spot!

WOW, Excellent food and even better service !!!
Highly recommended !!!
Had a double cheeseburger and onion rings, amazing burger and so so many onion rings and it all was so very tasty. I will be back for sure !!! Go and enjoy :)

Breakfast is excellent. Staff is friendly. My husband loves the potato pancakes and the O’Brien potatoes are the best! We are impressed and overwhelmed by the shake menu– on out to-​do list.

The food is fantastic!!! Service is super friendly, like you’re visiting good friends. Servings are big and leftovers a common occurrence. A great small town diner you will enjoy!

Good simple diner food. Warm and friendly staff. A good place for breakfast, lunch or dinner!

We loved this diner! We ended up there by default as it was the only viable place open between 2pm and 5pm. Turns out, we got really lucky. The service was wonderful and friendly; the prices were comparable to similar places in the area; and the food was really, really good. The fries were, in fact, the absolute best. Crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. By far the best fries we had had in a long while. The diner is known for its shakes, so I gave one a try. So many flavors to choose from. I went with the 3B. Peanut butter, Butterfinger, and butterscotch. It was truly delicious, but we’ll be craving those fries for a long time to come. We went back for breakfast the next morning. Again good food and great service. There was not a clinker in the bunch. Highly recommend!

If you and your family are passing through this might not be the place. Me and my family stopped by one morning for breakfast and it was NOT a very good experience. As soon as we walked in every one gave us dirty looks when we walked in and just made me and my family feel super uncomfortable. You could just tell they didnt like new people coming through there town. The food was ok. But overall I was dissapointed with coming here when I was on vacation.

Ive been disappointed twice last week. Yes the shakes are great. Beyond that go to mac donlds
Cant get a steak right. Asked for double cheese burger plse cook well. Came in about 5 min that was a grease burger swimming in grease, soaked the bun through. The meat looked and tasted not like meat, more like spongy plastic. There in the middle was a tomato, big core intact place ontop burger like cook was proud of it. Ask to have grease wrup out, got evil glares from cook return hamburger it was uneatable. … Im not a complainer infact this first review save yourself the trip you will be diappointed ty Dave

Food is average, but the shake menu is mind blowing! Five stars for the shakes, three stars for the food. Must stop for shakes in Lake Isabella!

We stopped in here on a hot and dry Sunday afternoon on our way home to get some take away ice cream, but ended up sitting down and sharing a BLT, which came with a bag of chips and then got shakes to go. The shakes are tasty, but whoever chose the options on the shakes menu has a real thing for peanuts. It reads like a Monty Python skit for spam. Peanuts, peanut butter, reece’s pieces, butterfingers! One or all of these are in almost every shake. It is just plain weird!
The décor here is quite ugly, tired, and in need of a remodel, but the staff were super friendly and the food we had was good, so we will consider this place again in the future.

Nelda’s Diner serves up burgers with soggy, squashed buns, heel ends of tomatoes and patties that taste like frozen grocery store items. There are also flies buzzing around every time. Service is fast and friendly but taste and quality is not there. Order a steak and ask for rare and you will receive well done and chewy. The fries and onion rings are good but the rings are often undercooked. no thanks.

Great food, great service. I love the flamer burger. 2 pages of milkshake choices and homemade pie

Shakes are amazing… Food and service not so much. Ordered the all you can eat ribs… Supposed to come with slaw, cornbread, potato, beans and dessert. Did not get slaw, cornbread or desert and the service was slow. Had to grab silverware off of a different table. Even after asking for some. So go for the shakes. Not the food. Had the Nick at Night show which is chocolate, peanut butter and Reese’s Pieces. Yum!

We stopped here while camping nearby at the KOA Lake Isabella site and wanted to avoid eating the standard fast food fare. We were happy to discover Nelda’s. The shake menu is extensive and the kids ordered some and I sampled them and they were terrific. My wife had the corner beef Reuben and I had the Baja burger with chicken breast. It was all delicious and served hot and quick. Really appreciate the Diner experience and the wait staff are all extremely hospitable. We’ll definitely be coming back.

This is a great place to eat. I like any milkshake served here. This is a good place for kids and the whole family. This time around I’m getting a brown eye girl milkshake and a western burger. I love this place a lot but I live 3 hours away.

I liked Michelle. She was good. My buddy had corned beef hash and loved it. I had an omelette. I’d come back. I want to try one of those shakes that just walked by me. But I don’t do shakes for breakfast.

A diner indeed! And as good as a diner gets.
From the moment that you walk in you feel like you are in that stereotypical, family friendly diner. But while you won’t find Flo or Alice, you won’t find any pretension here either. What you will find is perhaps a newspaper lying on the counter that you may want to take to your booth with you to read while enjoying your coffee, soda, beer or milkshake.
The menu includes many different choices and we settled on the burgers which were very, very tasty. The other dishes coming out of the kitchen looked very appetizing and the portions seemed more than plentiful.
With that being said you may wonder why the 3 stars. This rating is due to the extremely high prices and the amount of time it took to get our food. When we first arrived there were only two other tables with patrons. One of which already had their food and the other had obviously already ordered. After our order was finally taken it took over 30 minutes to get our burgers and fries. I would have more tolerance for this if everything was homemade, but clearly it is not. Which brings me to the prices. These prices are comparable to that of the Roadhouse or Moos Creamery, which would be fine if the quality were up there as well.
Unfortunately you will never see this establishment on Diners, Drive-​ins & Dives.

Totally normal diner with nice diner waitresses. It’s on a street straight out of anywhere in America, but that’s hard to find near Los Angeles.
Be sure to check out the video store across the street. They have VHS tapes!

They claim to be home of the «legendary, shakes, burgers and everything else» — that a tall order to fill but I think they are not far off. I had their pastrami burger and fries, WOW!
As usual we rolled into Nelda’s with a big crew after camping in the Sequoias just over yonder. We were hungry and ready for some good comfort food Nelda’s did not disappoint.
Next time? They say biscuits and gravy is a big hit with the locals but I spied a plate of Chicken Fried Steak at the next table over.