What’s Bend’s best restaurant with a view? Hint: It’s on a volcano

We knew it’d be spectacular but this? This is more like…awe. 

It’s a bluebird summer evening and the sun is slowly nesting into the folds of the High Cascades. I’m seated with my wife and daughter inside a restaurant at a window table. Shallow bowls of gorgeously crisp arancini fried golden brown, stuffed with sweet Dungeness crabmeat, and set in a rich, orange bisque sit before us. A plate of warm, tangy burrata splashed with zesty pesto, fragrant hot honey, and weeping oven-roasted tomatoes comes next. The grand finale will be juicy medallions of petit filet mignon served sticky with a thick, bourbon bacon jam. We’re all wide awake but eating in a dream. 

For all of this abundance of deliciousness, though, it’s the view outside that window that’s stealing the show. Picture it: Piebald mountains screaming out of the spruce and firs. High Cascade lakes twinkle like coins while the rolling, green shoulders of lesser peaks stack up like waves crashing toward infinity. The contrast is dizzying: A view for giants, a meal for royalty. 

Welcome to the mythical realm of the Norse gods, otherwise known as sunset dinners at Mt. Bachelor, where the mid-mountain Pine Marten Lodge transforms each summer into a culinary heaven 7,800 feet up the side of an ancient volcano. Yup, that’s awe all right.

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Summer dining at Mt. Bachelor

Bend’s culinary scene has matured immensely over the decades I’ve lived here, and with it, so have the restaurants with the best views. Put me on the deck at Monkless Brasserie with grilled peaches and crème staring up the languid Deschutes River and I’ll forget which day it is. One of the best spontaneous dates I ever had with my wife was on the sun-dappled rooftop bar at Zydeco Kitchen & Cocktails, a secret garden oasis right over downtown. Come winter, you’ll find me warming my bones at a window table overlooking Mirror Pond with a bowl of Sen Thai’s old-fashioned tom yum noodle soup. 

The woodsy, half-hour drive from downtown Bend to Mt. Bachelor is a familiar one to skiers and snowboarders who come for the 4,000-plus acres of lift-accessible terrain in winter. In summer, the mountain turns into a lift-served mountain biking hot spot with 13 miles of heart-pumping trails, zip lines, and hiking trails that need no permit, unlike many of the most popular hikes off the Cascade Lakes Highway. To get to the restaurant, you can hike about 1,200 vertical feet up rocky trails to the Pine Marten Lodge or you can do what we did and take the chairlift. Either way, no cars allowed. 

An otherworldly experience

A scenic ride up the Pine Marten chairlift in summer is a worthy excursion itself. My family and I simply parked at the West Village base area, checked in, then walked a short distance uphill to the loading area. Up and up we went, drifting over lupines and asters. Patches of snow still lingered, proof of the magnificent winters that make Bend so special. We gawked as the peaks and valleys slowly revealed themselves in the silence. 

Thirteen minutes later we reached the top station at 7,800 feet, the air noticeably cooler. Everything immediately felt different. The light. The air. The gravity nipping at your heels.  

“You really do feel like you’re in a whole different world,” Brianna Batson, Mt. Bachelor’s food and beverage director told me later. “You’re removed from the chaos and put in this place where you can just relax and feel like you’re on top of the world.”

We arrived much too early, on purpose, and ordered drinks from the bar. Outside, the lodge has an expansive patio with picnic tables where we take obligatory family photos and soak up the views of more than one million acres of undeveloped wilderness. Another group, clearly all friends, clink wine glasses and toast to new experiences. A lady in a white spring dress nuzzles up to her date. Broken Top and South Sister appear so close you can feel their snowy breath. 

The meal proves to rival the views. Batson has been working hard with chef Alex Rust to showcase the Pacific Northwest bounty on the menu. Rogue River cheeses. Pacific Seafood salmon. Beef from Snake River Farms, the American pioneers of Japanese Wagyu steaks. Handmade pastries. As the harvest changes, so does the menu. We eat and eat and eat some more. Our daughter says next time we should bring the grandparents. 

On the way down, I opt to linger while my wife and daughter hop on the lift for the lazy descent. I snap a few more pictures, hoping to enshrine this summertime highlight into my bank of forever memories. I hop on the next chair and begin the languid journey back to Earth. I can hear my wife and daughter giggling the whole way down.