Mountain High Rip-Off Chowder Bread Bowl

I was up at Mountain High snowboarding today on Christmas day. I normally don't eat up there cause I know their food is overpriced and nothing spectacular. But today I went with my brother, sister-in-law and her brother and they wanted to get some food. We got to the resort at 8am in the morning. You heard right! I woke up at 5:40am just so we could be on the road at around 6:30am to avoid the crazy traffic if we went any later.

After a morning's worth of runs down the slope, we decided to break for lunch. We saw a few others having clam chowder and my brother and his wife both had had it before. I also happen to love clam chowder. One summer about five years ago during a music festival at Newport Oregon, for a week I had pretty much most of the clam chowder at the restaurants by the ocean. So with their recommendation, I ordered one. We got totally ripped off.

(Mountain High Clam Chowder Bread Bowl)

The clam chowder itself wasn't bad. Sure it wasn't the best, nor was I expecting the best. It was descent and most importantly not overly salty. A lot of places tend to over-salt their clam chowder bread bowls. The problem was that the bread was incorrectly cut into a bowl, which left us with around five spoonfuls of soup. The $8 we spent on the bowl was gone near instantaneously, except for the bread. They simply didn't hollow out enough of the bread itself to get a descent amount of soup inside. I understand this is a tourist trap type restaurant, but I've had other tourist trap bread bowls and none compared to this insanely little amount of soup we actually got. In essence we paid $8 for a piece of sourdough bread with a tad bit of clam chowder as a dipping sauce. In my brother's defense, the last time they ordered the bread bowl, the bread was cut properly and there was a bit more soup. It was simply a matter of inconsistency on the part of Mountain High.

I would generally avoid tourist spots' joints. But sometimes I do enjoy splurging just a bit more for mediocre food because of the environment I'm in. After a nice morning out on the slope, it is nice to sit in a restaurant with fellow snowboarders and eat some mediocre overpriced food. That idea taste good in my mind, as long as I actually get a reasonable amount of what I ordered. C'est La Vie. That's the price I pay for eating at a tourist joint.

Enjoy some of the other pictures from this little excursion. It may help you understand why that bowl of clam chowder looked so good before we reached the bottom of the bowl in a matter of approximately one minute. On our way back to our car, I saw a group eating hot Shin brand Korean instant cup noodles at the back of their car with little tables and chairs out. That's the real way to go to enjoy the atmosphere: parking lot instant noodles. Consolation prize today was a cup of boba milk tea from Quickly's when we got back to San Gabriel.

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(Sunrise Drive To Mountain High Via 210 Freeway)

(View On Top Of Mountain High)

(Paul Kwo On Top Of Mountain High)

(Quickly's Boba Milk Tea)