Alpenrose Sierra Grill Restaurant, Mammoth Lakes, California, USA

The Alpenrose Sierra Grill Restaurant has been around a long time and in the last few years has had a few changes. The current owners, Maureena and Tony Rojas, bought the restaurant and re-opened it in 2001 as The Alpenrose Sierra Grill Restaurant serving a mix of California and odds and ends of European inspired dishes perfect for a winter season as well as spring, summer and fall. This is a family restaurant, owned by and family, served by family members for families who don't want to go to yet another chain of whatever level. The service is personal and real. The food, however, seems to go through periods when it can't quite decide what it wants to be. We have had some feed-back that it may currently be in a low part of the culinary curve. Be that as it may, a new chef, Chef Bryan Doi, joined the team in the winter of 2006-2007 and has changed the approach to the food and menu. He deserves time to refine his vistion and style.

We are informed that this new style is a "creative Pacific-Rim French fusion cuisie" featuring steaks, seafood and fondue, the latter of which is neither French nor Pacific Rim but which is very much Alpine.

The owners describe their menu as including "soft shell crab cakes, escargot en croute. Corn fed bone in rib eye steak with Maytag blue cheese and white truffle oil compound butter or Sake Glazed Canadian Chinook Salmon are but a taste of popular entrees.  Sweet endings Chocolate Fondue, Lemongrass Crème Brule or Warm Apple Strudel ala mode". Now I love apple strudel, but I am not sure I would describe it as either "fusion" or "Pacific Rim". So some traces of the old Alpenrose are still in evidence.

We are told that the interior has also been changed from a Tyrolian ambiance to a more modern one.

Until we are able to visit the restaurant again, sample the cuisine and photograph it for you, we can only pass on the information from the owners who are trying to update the whole character of the restaurant. Meanwhile we will leave the photos from the past years in place until we have something new to replace them with. They still give a sense of the place.

© 2000 photos Peter D'Aprix

The restaurant started life in 1978 as the Swiss Café built and designed by Max and Hilde Ruland-Rigg. For a while it was sold and owned by someone else but in 1994 the family bought it back and reopened it as the Alpenrose Restaurant.