The Valley Vagabond-Breakfast at the Salish Lodge & Spa

[Article by Kira Denny and Melissa Grant]

Dear me, that was a lot of food….

I’ll take any excuse to go out to eat. So, when I needed to interview someone who had recently gone to stay or eat at the Salish Lodge & Spa for an article on their health and safety procedures and couldn’t “find” anyone, well, I volunteered to do it myself. After all, it has been over a year since Danna and I first met eating at the Salish.

One of the best small resort hotels in the US, the Salish Lodge & Spa, is an excellent destination for a pandemic staycation, breakfast, or even a night out. The Valley’s beloved Lodge is part of Snoqualmie’s history. Originally the Snoqualmie Falls Lodge, it began as an eight-room inn built in 1916 as a rest stop for travelers and overlooks the beautiful falls and Valley.

As we talked to our wonderful server, Lyndsay, a lifelong local who works at the Salish along with her twin Lauren, we discovered their Grandmother worked in the lodge decades before in the 1950s. I remember as a child coming to the Lodge and seeing the “honey from heaven” ritual. Your server came tableside as the food was served, climbed on a step stool to drip honey onto your food from high above. The dripping honey represented the waterfall on which the Lodge is situated. Today, the ritual is still alive, sans footstool, which is likely not an OSHA approved practice in the modern world.

The honey comes from an onsite apiary, which pollinates 80 percent of the flowering crops that produce a substantial percentage of the food they depend on for their two onsite restaurants, the Attic and the Dining Room.

Surrounded by hiking trails and picturesque views, Salish Lodge & Spa offers the perfect Pacific Northwest experience. All 86 guestrooms have gas fireplaces, spa-like showers, or oversized soaking bathtubs, and many of the rooms also have views of Snoqualmie River.

By June 15th, the Attic, the Dining Room, and some limited services at the Spa had reopened their doors. The Salish Lodge & Spa are doing all they can to keep guests and staff healthy. The Lodge has placed touchless hand sanitizer stations throughout the building, and all team members are required to have their temperature checked before entering the Lodge. Plexiglass screens are in use at desks, and host stands, and each guestroom features a complimentary PPE kit with masks and sanitizing wipes.

There are two new outdoor patio dining areas in addition to the changes inside the Lodge. The Valley patio offers Snoqualmie Valley views, while the Valet patio out front has a street-side café feel. These new dining areas follow safe social distancing guidelines with touchless menus, hand sanitizer on each table, masked servers, and a six-foot distance between tables.

We had our country breakfast overlooking the valley view, and I have to say I couldn’t have had a more perfect experience in these odd uncertain times. The marketing department even pulled out their special “rainbow over the falls” package for us. The ONLY thing that could have been improved upon was my ability to hold more food and maybe make morning a little later in the day.