A Cody Meal With a Side of Old West Character

A large cherrywood back bar gives this long-standing Cody restaurant a proper saloon-style center of gravity. It is an object worth stopping to look at before dinner arrives, especially because the bar is said to have been a gift from Queen Victoria. Ask about it, then take a moment to notice how much else is competing for your attention around the room.

This is a meal stop with the visual density of a small Old West museum. Mounted animals, firearms, rifles, pistols and assorted Western-era memorabilia cover the walls and turn an ordinary walk to a booth into a slow browse. The dining room has the character of an old hotel, with the restaurant’s historic furnishings doing plenty of the storytelling.

The atmosphere is distinctly Cody: traditional saloon energy, a little theatrical in the best possible way, and packed with things to inspect. You can sit down for a burger or a full prime-rib dinner, then find yourself getting up afterward for a closer look at an old object across the room.

There are booths, standard tables, counter seating and a bar area, so the room does not have a single rigid mood. A pair can settle into a booth, while solo diners or people who prefer a more casual perch have other options.

At dinner, the room can become lively and moderately noisy. At quieter times, it can be easy to hold a conversation without feeling hurried. The friendly, attentive service helps keep the setting from becoming all scenery and no comfort, and staff can be helpful with Cody-area questions as well.

The menu covers a lot of ground, which is useful when one person has a steakhouse appetite and another is in the mood for fish or a sandwich. Prime rib is a familiar choice here, alongside steaks, trout, fish and chips, chicken-fried steak, burgers, nachos and other American standards.

Prime rib can come with a choice of side plus soup or salad-bar access, making it a full old-fashioned dinner rather than just a carved slice of beef. Sharing arrangements have also included an added plate charge while each diner received soup and salad, though current details are best confirmed with the restaurant.

The rib-eye salad is a lighter route that still keeps steak on the table. The portion of rib-eye has been described as thin, tender and well cooked—a reasonable compromise for someone who wants beef without committing to the larger steak-and-potatoes format.

The salad bar gets attention for crisp greens and a generous range of toppings. It makes a useful starting point before a rich entrée, and it can be satisfying in its own right on a day when a road-trip lunch needs to stay a little lighter.

Soups have included creamed spinach and ham soup, broccoli-cheddar and tomato bisque. Those are the sort of small menu details that suit a cool evening in a historic dining room—especially when prime rib is not the only thing you want to talk about at the table.

Other dishes that have stood out include chili, coconut shrimp, barbecue ribs, roasted vegetables, mashed potatoes and bread pudding. There is enough range here to avoid the trap of everyone ordering the same Western-themed plate.

Buffet service is a notable piece of the restaurant’s identity when it is available. The spread is more substantial than a token sideboard, with a salad bar and several hot entrées and sides that make it easy to sample across the menu.

One dinner spread included salad, prime rib, ham, salmon, pork ribs, barbecue chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans and pasta, with additional dishes beyond that list. It is a generous format for a hungry group, particularly when nobody can agree on a single entrée.

Breakfast buffet service has also been a popular option. Buffet availability can vary by meal and date, however, and lunch visitors have sometimes found it unavailable. It is worth checking current service before planning the day around it.

The restaurant works nicely as a pause between Cody activities because its surroundings keep the Western mood going beyond the dining room. One approach has been to time dinner around a 6 p.m. Wild West street show beside the restaurant, turning the evening into a meal-plus-entertainment outing.

That street-show timing should be verified before making plans, but the basic pairing makes sense: take in some nearby Cody activity, sit down among the old furnishings and artifacts, and leave the restaurant with more than a standard dinner-stop memory.

Parking is primarily free street parking. It has been easy to find at some times and more competitive during busier visits, so conditions can shift with the day’s traffic.

Dinner can draw a crowd, though seating has generally moved along quickly. If the room is humming, the bar, wall displays and saloon-like setting provide plenty to look at while the evening gets underway.

Some Cody visitors make more than one meal here during a stay, which is understandable given the split personality of the place. Breakfast can be one visit, a soup-and-salad lunch another, and a prime-rib or buffet dinner the fuller outing.

Even after the plates are cleared, the room still has a few reasons to linger. A closer look at the cherrywood bar or one more pass by the memorabilia can be a fitting final stop before heading back out onto Cody’s Western-flavored streets.