Whitebark Restaurant

Staying here again at the Westin. This time, we will not even attempt to give this place another try.

We should have eaten here and not wasted so much $$ eating at Campo down the street, but whatever. This place only gets 4 stars because I didn’t eat dinner here, so it wouldn’t be fair to give them 5. When I come back, I’ll review again and expect to give them 5. Lunch was great, its easy to make a turkey sandwich or chicken sandwich, but its takes talent to make an aoli that matches, to char the chicken to give it a good gril flavor, and to have a nice bread or bun to put it all in. The service is excellent, the décor is great. I’d love to have tried the sushi, but they weren’t open yet and I had a flight to catch. The hotel is a great place to stay, and is also pet friendly. The bar here is excellent too.

So while the in-​room dining program in Westin leaves a lot to be desired, Whitebark is pretty on point. The variety of the drinks and food option is superb, and the ambience is «ski sexy.»
Props to bartender Cornell. Mixes a mean drink, helped us out the next day when we had altitude sickness, and spent his down time polishing glass. Just a great guy… A worker. Give him a raise!

Food was good but really overpriced, but what really did it was the waitress coming by once during the one hour we ate

It’s a pretty atmosphere, but the food was less than adequate. Tuna looked great on the plate, but unfortunately that’s the most positive comment I can make. Calamari was served with ketchup. Our waitress went MIA, so we flagged down a waiter. When we advised him about the ketchup, we got ketchup a second time. We told him it was still ketchup, but he said NO the chef said it’s cocktail sauce. We said no, it’s just ketchup. The third time (and by now the calamari was cold) they clearly threw in some horseradish (a little lemon & worcestershire would have helped), but still not good. That’s when our waitress turned back up again. We called it a night.
No apology, just an excuse about a mix-​up in the kitchen and a bill that added to the bad taste in my mouth. We won’t be back!

Sushi has gone downhill, don’t order… but the bar is pretty, and has great happy hour deals for other food.

It really didn’t cut it– At all! Ordered a mix of the sushi menu and the regular menu. The ahi tetaki was really good — nothing to complain there. The sushi roll however was not edible. The rice was undercooked and ice cold with almost no crab meat within the roll. The roll was chewy with a Fishy taste. Truly the worst roll I have ever had. Every airport or grocery store will beat this roll. The signature filet mignon was satisfactory, the quality you would get in business class. The gratin however was ice cold in the center. I really expected more from a restaurant within a Westin. Can’t recommend at all (with the exception of the bar area which is nice).

My hotel is better than your hotel! Love this place. Pick up the gondola 20 ft for the bar. No brainer.

Went on a very busy night for my birthday with a large group. Food was delicious and the staff was responsive and stood behind their guarantee of quality. Presentation and ambience were lovely.

Sushi Monday’s hear @ the Whitebark are always tasty ! And the healthy tomato basil soup was a delicious start to a tender pork tenderloin dinner.
Always a treat to dine hear and and the service is exceptional ! Thank you Westin

This place has seriously gone downhill in the past few years. The staff is unfriendly. This is not a good place for locals, and only good for tourists if you really want to be ripped off and treated poorly (ya know, the true LA experience)
Whatever they changed about the salmon is so saddening. They most definitely should have changed the price (to free) with whatever changes they made to the recipe/​preparation.
Their seafood and sushi used to be truly 5 star, but now, the menu is uninspired, the preparation seems halfassed, and ingredients are subpar.
Big thumbs down Westin, get your act together.
PS, a «high end» bar and restaurant with community nuts on the bar? Ew. Disgusting. Have you seen the movie Black Mass? Disgusting grubby fingers in a shared food with strangers. That is NOT 5 star.

We went for a bite at 10pm so our options were limited but we were pleased to find out that Whitebark was still serving food in the bar until 11pm. The bar was not overly crowded and there were a handful of bartenders/​servers working but the service was terrible. The staff seemed to want to converse with each other, friends they had visiting or co-​workers that were off the clock more than take care of the guests. The salad we ordered was good and the sliders were ok, they might have been better had we been checked on and asked if we wanted a side of ranch or ketchup but that wasn’t an option.

First of all, after many years of business travel, I am very averse to eating at hotel restaurants. That said, we had a hard time finding somewhere open at 9pm that wasn’t burgers or pizzas.
So, reluctantly, we sauntered up to the bar and we’re happy to discover happy hour pricing on the bar menu. We ordered the Mac and cheese, the duck quesadilla, and the bison flatiron steak. All were great, but especially the duck quesadilla with «fall salsa» was amazing!
Local beer on tap, and very friendly bartender with its of good advice on places to explore in the area.

All I can say I been very pleased either with the food and the service, all the waitress they been nice, sushi last night was very fresh and delicious, but what we like the most was today breakfast, we ask for chilaquiles and may goodness best chilaquiles ever not to mention the best attention. Five star because it deserves nothing else

One star is pretty low, I realize that and I don’t believe I have ever given a restaurant this low of a review. I only do this because they come across as a higher end restaurant but they need improvement.
Whitebark is located in the Westin Monache Resort. Resort has different meanings in Mono County, at the Westin you think things would be pretty good. They need to seriously work on this restaurant.
The restaurant also has a sushi bar. There was no sushi chef on premise at dinner time (7:30) but we still ordered a roll as an appetizer. The roll reminded me of something I would get pre-​packaged at a grocery store. It taste like it had been made hours before. When you’re paying $ 15+ for a roll, you would think it would be made fresh.
Our waitress was nice but not knowledgeable when it came to serving wine or waiting tables. I don’t blame her, I blame the owners for not training their staff. When you ask someone if they are finished and they say yes, you should clear their plate. She didn’t and the plate stayed there until someone who might be a floor manager came by and cleared it.
My wife’s portobello mushroom was lame. It was covered in risotto that was tasteless. The mushroom was thin, which I imagine is why they cover it in risotto. At least make the risotto taste good. Are these chefs (?) tasting the food they send out?
My ½ Organic chicken was dry and tasteless. Again, does the cook (?) taste what they are making?
When you go to a place in The Westin, order a $ 60 (low end) bottle of wine and $ 20+ dishes, you expect more. I would stick to the beer and pizza joints in Mammoth. It’s hard to screw that up.
If the Westin questions my review I’m at the hotel until Tuesday and will be glad to discuss my experience with them in detail.

This is the dining room at the Westin Monache Resort in Mammoth Lakes. We had breakfast there. The service was outstanding! Our waitress couldn’t do enough for us. The restaurant was filled with people, but all orders came quickly.
The food was tasty. I ordered the All American Breakfast: two eggs with choice of bacon, sausage or ham, rosemary potatoes and toast. The bacon was done perfectly as I like it: crispy but not burned. My daughter ordered Eggs Benedict and said they were good. She noted a hint of spice to the sauce that is different than Hollandaise sauce is generally. The waitress said they add paprika to it. Prior to getting our entrees, we were each served a small plate of fresh fruit with blueberries, melon and strawberries. We assumed this was just something that went with the breakfasts until we got our bill. There was a $ 1.00 charge for each. We had not ordered that, so were a little surprised. My granddaughter wanted strawberries when she saw ours, so our waitress brought her a bowl of them.
The location on the ground floor is elegant. There are majestic pines out every window and one senses the smells of the mountains and trees. The restaurant is lovely. This was a good choice for breakfast.

First off. This is inside the Westin hotel.
Four stars and not 5 because it doesn’t have a continental breakfast buffet. It only has a conti option on the menu that comes pre-​prepared for you and includes crummy stuff like yogurt and cereal. The good news is that if you’re SPG elite and choose the free breakfast option you can use the 15 $ that the conti option costs and apply it to another menu option. But if you do you don’t get a drink included.
Also I wouldn’t say the wait staff is best of the best. They are standard hotel fair. They prolly turn over quickly so they don’t know the menu really well. But they are prompt and nice and very accommodating to my menu mods.
I would love to try dinner here because it looks like they have great sushi options. But that said, it will probably be as overpriced as breakfast was. Obvs to be expected at Starwood restaurants.

Mammoth Lakes — the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. The Vail of the West that never was. The victim of time-​share and condo-​mania built too quickly and too late. Pushed upmarket but not far enough to attract the true big spenders. An empty lot where the skeleton of a sign that once eagerly proclaimed itself to be the future location of a Ritz Carlton Residence Club is succumbing to wood rot. A half-​finished «downtown village» of «high-​rise» hotel buildings that are nail-​for-​nail clones of «moderate» condo-​tels from Whistler-​Blackcomb, and rising above it all, like a château among the pines, the Westin Monache — the only truly hotel-​like property in town in service and aesthetic. It’s montane-​moderne motif is omnipresent, and nowhere is it more apparent than in Whitebark.
Whitebark, listed as one of the «Village Restaurants» is not part of the village proper — to reach it one must cross Canyon Boulevard at the tram stop, beneath the Village Gondola, and climb the mountain of steps leading to the Westin’s lobby. Once inside, the faux-​crafstman aesthetic of the Village gives way to something quite different, and the restaurant itself — with its polished steel accents, ‘floating’ river stone ceiling, and glossy granite walls, broken with floating fireplaces — seems curiously appropriate for Mammoth, yet entirely different from what you’d expect. The local inspiration is clear, but the manner in which it is used is decidedly unique. It only works here, in this one place. It is sophisticated in a way Mammoth Mountain ski area’s attempts at copying trendy LA aesthetics cannot be precisely because it is meant to BE Mammoth revisited — not a copy of something else. It is without a doubt the most striking dining room interior in the Eastern Sierra. And I say this as an unabashed critic of modern architecture.
The menu is also in keeping with its setting — local yet unconventional. Duck, venison, steak and chops, all spun with fusions of asian and Mediterranean flavors. The Caesar Salad, at $ 9, is of the delightful wedge variety — two large very crisp and cold romaine wedges with fresh parmesean, crostini, and a dressing with the spicy, aromatic, seafood-​like aroma that only comes from a truly fresh anchovy-​rich dressing. The wild Lassen Rainbow Trout ($ 28), on a bed of pearl pasta and vegetables, with its lemon-​dill reduction, was a refreshing meshing of textures — a nutty pasta, a slight pickled sensation from the reduction, and a mild carrot flavor. Perfection. Duck confit pasta, elk chops — each dish was an exceedingly generous portion, with an unexpected yet fitting twist. The Asian influences are light and accentory in nature, and the presentation as masterful as any fine restaurant in the Southland, yet still different — decidedly different, decidedly Mammoth.
The service is attentive, yet on busy nights gets swamped and the meal becomes quite leisurely. However, each staff member is trained to anticipate needs before they arise and to treat every guest like a regular whether you are staying at the Westin or not. This is something other Mammoth restaurants desperately need to learn.
The bar area possesses its own menu of sophisticated pub fare (the gourmet sliders, with different meats and sauces, are an ever changing delight) and recently a full sushi bar was added, and my friends claim it’s the best sushi in Mammoth (which isn’t hard… given Sushi Rei is pretty lackluster). Will definitely have to return. The wine list is extensive, and the drinks quite stiff and masterful. This is the only bar in Mammoth that makes a proper Old Fashioned.
Perhaps Mammoth will someday reach its full potential and abandon its LA-​in-​the-​mountains aesthetic and attitude and achieve true sophistication. But until that day comes Whitebark offers a privileged glimpse of that possibility. It is amazing. The best splurge on the Eastside.

It’s «one of THOSE places» that serves tiny food items on huge plates. I’m not sure if that’s supposed to make it more exotic??? I would consider it a «nice restaurant». Usually when my dinner bill is $ 55, it kinda has to fit in that category. That being said, I dunno if it was really worth that. The food items, although exotic, really didn’t seem that special to me. If I’m in the mood for a «nice restaurant», there’s a couple other places in town that I’d prefer.
I got the «Sump’n Good» cocktail, which was relatively good, but had tons of ice in the cup. I was even sucking up ice with my straw, which was unusual. The Dorado was a little bit rubber and didn’t have much flavor. I’ve never had it before so I can’t really compare, but I wasn’t impressed. The red quinoa that came with it wasn’t bad, and had fruit mixed in it. The veggies served with it consisted of 2 small (bite-​sized) squash cut in half and a sprinkle of arugula or something. I’m not a huge eater, but naturally, I wasn’t full. I then got the Crème Brulee which sounded very appetizing. It apparently was neither Crème nor Brulee, as it’s made from something dairy-​free (didn’t taste as good), and it was barely burnt on top.
Service was ok, no complaints. The valet was fine (and nice that it was free).

Lovely happy hour (s) during the summer. Great deal on their food and drinks. The servers and bartenders were all very nice, social and attentive.
We had our small son with us and we sat at a table in the bar area and enjoyed a nice meal off the happy hour menu. The sliders were pretty yum and the beet salad was perfect.