The basic Xanterra dining experience is represented by Canyon Lodge Eatery, a casual cafeteria in a visually appealing midcentury modern building with a Googie/Populuxe/Doo Wop design vibe—all soaring ceilings, space age starburst light fixtures painted blue, green, and tangerine, and tables, chairs, and umbrellas in a rainbow of futuristic hues. It is situated in Canyon Village, a sprawling area featuring the greatest concentration of accommodations in Yellowstone, on the east side of the park near the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River. Unlike some of the park’s other eateries, for instance, those overlooking the iconic Old Faithful geyser, the restaurant does not have much of a view, unless one likes parking lots. Canyon Lodge Eatery is a busy place: It might serve over 450,000 meals in a typical May-to-September season, with 3,000–3,900 transactions a day. But for the most part, the cafeteria is not pricey; in 2019, the average check was $10.36. Total seasonal food sales for the 149 days they were open were $4,768,444, plus another $406,305 for beverages (Boss 2019).
The way Xanterra communicates about the dining experience at Canyon Lodge Eatery has changed, presumably only temporarily, during the COVID years. Lots of evocative details and photos that were present on the restaurant’s web page in 2020 have subsequently disappeared, apparently in response to supply chain issues and labor shortages that have made promising too much a fool’s errand. Whereas in 2022, the restaurant’s website directs eaters to visit the restaurant itself to get ahold of a menu, its 2020 and earlier iteration emphasized the transformative power of customization, appealing to eaters aspiring to control their own destinies: With an establishing photo that is a wide shot of the restaurant’s mostly empty interior, depicting a smattering of white families eating on colorful barstools in the Doo Wop style of diners everywhere, website visitors were hailed with the phrase, “Customize Your Meal with Fresh Ingredients.”
The Canyon Lodge Eatery website detailed two cafeteria-style service bar options for customizing lunch or dinner with “fresh sustainable items, including local ingredients as available”—language that is suggestive of Xanterra’s ambitions, but not overly committal: “Fresh Woks” and “Slow Food Fast.” At the Fresh Woks counter, what customers can select has changed over the years, presumably in response to supply chain issues, but generally they are invited to choose a rice or noodle base, a protein, a sauce, and some toppings. Prior to the complicating factor of supply chain issues, various versions of the Fresh Woks menu nodded toward the local and sustainable. In one version, from 2020, the only food item on the menu that indicated anything about provenance was the Wild Alaska Pollock, which might be considered local in Kenai Fjords National Park but is a far cry from local to northwestern Wyoming. From $7.95 for kids to $13.95 for the most jazzed up regular wok, the 2020 prices are consistent with national norms for fast casual outside the park. The only food item on the menu labeled as locally sourced is an “Elliott’s of Montana Fresh Baked Cookie.” The menu does contain a key for which items are vegetarian (V), vegan (VG), or gluten free (GF), but its creators seem to have forgotten to label most of the items. There is a special green leaf icon for “menu items made with sustainable and/or organic ingredients,” but only the Alaskan pollock earns this designation on the Fresh Woks menu.
Beyond Fresh Woks, the other option at Canyon Lodge Eatery is “Slow Food Fast,” framed as another “choose own adventure” kind of setup, this time sans wok. The same menu key exists here, but not a single thing has a V, VG, GF, or the vaunted green leaf, despite listings that include “Organic Chicken and Vegetable Chili” and “Beyond Meat™ Plant Based Swiss Steak.” Xanterra knows that sustainability, locality, and customization are appealing to today’s cosmopolitan travelers, and they nod to these concepts on their website and menu. But Xanterra provides little of the real information that would allow eaters to facilitate the purchase of sustainable and local foods.
The breakfast menu at Canyon Lodge Eatery does go somewhat further in signifying local and sustainable options, noting the availability of local hot cereals (Cream of the West™ Whole Grain or Montana Milling™ Oatmeal), vanilla almond milk with no genetically modified organisms (GMO), Rainforest Alliance coffee, Blue Sky™ non GMO organic sodas, and organic flavored sparkling water, as well as affordable reusable cups that will allow refills at a discount. Not designated as organic or sustainable, but surely of interest to today’s demanding diner, are the Kevita sparkling probiotic and Kevita kombucha, signaling that we’re not at your dad’s national park canteen anymore.
Although breakfast is more promising, the enrichment seeking, conscious traveler hailed on Xanterra’s homepage is likely to be disappointed in lunch or dinner at the Canyon Lodge Eatery – a phenomenon borne out in TripAdvisor reviews, where (as of this writing) it comes in dead last, #27 out of the 27 Yellowstone eateries reviewed on the site. (I discuss reviews in more depth in Chapter 5.) But perhaps, at the lower price point that prevails at Canyon Lodge Eatery, despite the trendy rhetoric of choice and customization, the cosmopolitan visitor is not at all the target audience.