Bar Piedra at dusk: a stone-walled room with a long wooden table laid with glasses and a single lamp burning on the wall

Four rooms, one kitchen

Dining

One kitchen feeds the whole building. It starts at five in the morning with bread and finishes somewhere near midnight with the last plate out of Bar Piedra.

What is cooked depends on what arrived. Lamb comes up the Pilcaniyeu road once a week. Trout comes from the lake when the boats have had a good morning. Vegetables are from the Río Negro valley in summer and from store in winter, and we will say which when you ask. Nothing on this site lists what anything costs; the board at the door of each room does that, and the desk will tell you over the telephone.

Dinner

Comedor Cipresal

The long dining room off the hall, under the original cypress beams, with the window wall on one side and the fire visible through the open doorway on the other. There are twenty-two tables and no music, because the room is built of stone and timber and anything amplified in it sounds wrong.

Dinner is three courses written out each afternoon, with one meat, one fish and one dish without either. If you have told us about an allergy when you booked, the kitchen will already have a plate planned for you and the waiter will know about it before you sit down.

Open19:30 to 22:30, daily
Tables22, booked at the desk
Last order21:45
Childrenwelcome, early sitting at 19:00
Dresswhatever you walked in

Evening

Bar Piedra

Down the stone stair, in the oldest part of the building, where the walls are the bare moraine stone the lodge was founded on and the ceiling is low enough to make the room feel smaller than it is. There is one lamp on the wall, a short counter, and tables that were made here from offcuts of the roof.

It serves Patagonian beer, a short wine list from Neuquén and Río Negro, and small plates to go with a drink. The bar sits on the same lower floor as the gaming room, a door apart, so people drift between the two without putting a coat on.

Open18:00 until late
Wherelower floor, stone stair or lift
Seatsabout 30
Kitchensmall plates to 23:00
Ageover 18 after 21:00

Breakfast

La Leñera

The old wood store next to the back door, floored in slate and still smelling faintly of cut cypress, now with six long tables in it. This is where breakfast happens, because it is the room nearest the boot racks and nobody has to walk through the hall in ski socks.

Bread and medialunas from the five o'clock bake, eggs cooked to order at the hatch, fruit, cheese, cold meat, and a pot of coffee that is refilled without being asked. Mate is set out at the end of the counter with hot water from seven.

Open07:30 to 10:30
Early startflask and rolls from 06:30, ask the night porter
Whereground floor, by the back door
Includedfor everyone staying
Packed lunchorder it the night before

December to March

Terraza de Enero

The west terrace, which keeps the sun until about nine in January and is the reason the lodge empties indoors in summer. Stone underfoot, a low wall to put a glass on, and the whole lake going from blue to pewter to pink while you sit there.

Lunch is served out here when the weather allows, and drinks from the middle of the afternoon until the light goes. It is cleared at ten so the rooms above it can sleep. In a Patagonian wind it closes with no notice at all, and the tables move inside to the hall.

Open12:30 to 22:00 in season
ClosedApril to November, and in wind
Seatsabout 40
Bookingnot taken, first come
Blanketsin the chest by the door

Tea in the hall

Between four and six every afternoon there is tea, coffee and whatever was baked that morning on a table beside the fire in the hall. There is no restaurant service: you help yourself and put the cup back on the tray. In winter this is the busiest hour in the building.

Telling us about food

Write or telephone before you arrive with anything the kitchen needs to know. Coeliac, nut allergy, no shellfish, no meat, a child who will only eat rice: all of it is easier to handle a week ahead than at half past eight on a Saturday. The kitchen keeps a written list and the dining room staff read it before every service.

Write to the kitchen