Glacier Highland Restaurant, West Glacier, Montana

After a great lunch at the Avon Family Cafe, Nancy and I headed north for four hours or so, and made it to West Glacier and to our room at the Glacier Highland Motel.

We unpacked, looked about, and set our sights on dinner. Alas, as a general matter, the food near and inside our National Parks is not always the best. And in West Glacier there really aren’t many options that don’t require a long drive and an uncertain result. In our case, moreover, we both had serious colds from our very wet, cold, and wonderful Alaska trip. The only two sit-down non-Park Service restaurants available flanked our motel. We ended up having three meals, a dinner and two breakfasts, at Glacier Highland.

It’s a nice looking place that blends in well with the scenery. It has a gift shop with rudimentary groceries, snacks, and necessities over on the Conoco station side, and the restaurant side has a counter with stools, booths, and high tops.

Nancy was even more under the weather than I, so we decided to get carryout the first night, and I walked down to Glacier Highland to get dinner to go.

Glacier Highland is a model of efficiency. Service is very fast, so fast that I didn’t have time to finish my beer before the order arrived — for some things you make time — and special orders don’t upset them. That’s because they simply don’t do special orders. Nancy had looked over the online menu and wanted either a sandwich or an entree salad from the lunch menu. Not available, only the dinner menu. This presented a crisis. I had to choose a dish for Nancy. I picked a Middle Eastern dinner salad with farro, chopped vegetables, chick peas, and feta, tossed with a lemon-dill dressing that could not come on the side ($23). It was called the Ptarmigan, and I hoped Nancy wouldn’t grouse about it.

Okay. Nancy never grouses. Indeed, she’s a Real Trooper. See here. A ptarmigan is a kind of grouse. I apologize of the pun.

Anyway, I ordered a Black and Bleu Salad — a steak salad with bleu cheese, and I asked for the steak cooked rare. Nope. They cook all steaks well done. I looked at the menu options again and chose the Chicken Pot Pie ($25).

Nancy was very pleased with her salad, and I was very impressed by the wonderful crust that topped the pot pie. The pot pie also had a flaky bottom crust. What it did not have was much in the way of chicken, vegetables, or basic seasoning. It did have a whole lot of mashed potatoes. It wasn’t great, but it was good enough.

Speaking of pies, Glacier Highland makes their own every other day. Huckleberries are very big in Montana. You can get huckleberry in or on top of anything from pancakes to steaks. I’d never had huckleberries, so I ordered a slice.

The crust was good and the filling was very tasty and very, very sweet.

We went to bed with full stomachs and blythe hearts. With our colds, getting into the park and onto the Road to the Sun without permits before 6:00 am was not in the cards, so we slept in a bit and the next morning rose and went back to Glacier Highland for breakfast.

Nancy ordered a two-egg Veggie Scramble ($16) that came with whole wheat toast and potatoes.

Nancy was well pleased. As you can see, there were lots of vegetables, which is just what she wanted.

I ordered The Rookie, bacon and eggs over easy with white toast and potatoes ($12).

It was a good breakfast. The fried eggs were somewhat overcooked, but there was still a good bit of runny yolk to improve the potatoes and toast. I was dismayed that the potatoes weren’t cooked on the griddle, so they lacked that hint of bacon grease. Still, they were fairly crisp on the outside and soft within, with a good potato flavor. The bacon slices were thin and nicely crisped. (Another plate offers a larger serving of meat for another $5.)

We returned to Glacier Highland for breakfast on our last morning in Glacier. Nancy ordered another Veggie Scramble, this time substituting fruit for the potatoes.

The Scramble was a hit once more, and she was happy with the fruit. I ordered a Breakfast Croissant ($16), with two eggs and bacon, and potatoes came on the side unbidden.

This was a treat! It was a delicious croissant, buttery and flaky. The two scrambled eggs, while not exactly creamy and fluffy, arrived hot, and not preformed. The bacon was crisp and the American cheese had melted beautifully, as it always does. This was a flavorful, filling breakfast. Nancy’s toast arrived at table piping hot and well buttered, and even the potatoes tasted better than before.

I’ll give Glacier Highland a thumbs up. One of the keys to enjoying a meal is knowing what you can expect of the restaurant. Glacier National Park is snowbound most of the year. Things reopen in the spring and nearly a million hungry visitors arrive every month. You can hope for fast and friendly service, and a nice setting. You get all of that at Glacier. If you go another step and ask yourself what can they do well? And, why did I make this trip, for the food or for the mountains, lakes, trails, wildlife, and waterfalls and realize that you’re in paradise.

Enjoy Glacier National Park, count your blessings, and enjoy Glacier Highland.

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