Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [197]
Take-out meals are also available, and the menu lists the Waldorf’s phone number as 683–2400–I–AIN’T–COOKIN’.
Wapiti Lodge and Steak House
3189 Yellowstone Hwy.
307–587–6659
Wapiti, WY
D | $$
The drive out to Wapiti Lodge from Cody is a beautiful half-hour along the Shoshone River, past the Buffalo Bill Reservoir and Dam toward Yellowstone Park. The Lodge shares a building with the post office, which, other than a school, seems to be the only public building in the small settlement of Wapiti.
The Lodge is an old, rustic place with a log cabin feel and décor that includes a lot of hunting trophies and western memorabilia. Of course, beef is big on the menu, from a Rocky Mountain oyster hors d’oeuvre to a long list of various-size sirloins and filets mignons as well as prime rib from twelve to twenty ounces. The rib-eye steak we had was smoky-flavored and luxuriously fatty, as luscious as prime rib. Jane declared her lamb chops to be four-star. Blackened food, including chicken breast and red snapper, is a house specialty. Although we’ve tried neither, we can tell you that the blackened prime rib is delicious. Many people come to eat racks of baby back ribs, tender little riblets presented under a glaze of good barbecue sauce.
Dinner includes a wonderfully old-fashioned relish tray that comes with a ramekin of what tastes like California dip (made from Lipton’s onion soup) as well as a curious salad that was surprisingly modern, i.e., contained no iceberg lettuce, but did contain radicchio and a few Northwest cherries.
Yellowstone Drug
127 Main St.
307–876–2539
Shoshoni, WY
L | $
Yellowstone Drug is a wonderful attraction with something for everyone: cowboy clothing for sale, including hats, boots, and spurs; an inventory of tack including roping saddles and a few stunning horsehair bridles made by inmates at the state prison; bumper stickers that say “Christian cowboys have more fun” and bookends and rifle racks that proprietor Ted Surrency makes from horseshoes and spurs. It has a patent medicine display and vintage (unlocked) security vaults (from when the building was the First National Bank of Shoshoni) available for impromptu walk-in visits.
The most important of Yellowstone Drug’s assets is a large assortment of ice cream. The ice cream is available by the cup or cone, in sodas, floats, and sundaes, but nearly everyone comes for the milkshakes. Since it opened in 1909, a sign in Yellowstone Drug has boasted that this is home of “the best malts and shakes in the state.” Made with a triple-wand shake maker behind the long counter, they are impressive—served with a spoon because their thickness defies a straw. Chocolate is the most popular flavor, followed by strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate peanut butter. Our personal choice is the locally beloved huckleberry. Altogether, there are fifty-nine flavors available, from almond to wild cherry, and you can mix any two, allowing a connoisseur to taste a different shake every Sunday from now until the middle of the century and beyond.
Arizona
Bisbee Breakfast Club
75A Erie St.
520–432–5885
Bisbee, AZ 85603
BL (closed Tues & Weds) | $
The Bisbee Breakfast Club is the sort of place that makes traveling with an appetite so much fun: it is loved by locals and serves personality-plus food at low prices. Opened by Pat and Heather Grimm on Good Friday in 2005, it has since become a magnet for people from as far away as Douglas and even Tucson. But most customers are regulars from Bisbee. The everyday clientele reflects the curious population of a community that has gone from mining town to hippie enclave to artist colony and is now becoming