The Ahwahnee Hotel has a rather fancy new dinner menu you may have heard about.
It is a prix fixe luxury dining experience that includes duck confit with wild mushroom jus, a roast elk with sunchoke puree and an appetizer of Dungeness crab with a St. Germain whip, all for $95 a person for five-courses, or $125 for seven-courses.
But an annual review of its kitchen by the National Park Service may have you wondering about what’s not listed on the menu.
The Ahwahnee Hotel Kitchen and Yosemite Valley Lodge Base Camp Eatery both received an “unsatisfactory” rating for basic food safety standards.
The issues identified were rather stomach turning: soiled, aging and moldy walk-in coolers, soiled food preparation and dining areas and irregular cleaning schedules of cooking and refrigeration equipment.
It is enough to make even less refined diners think, “ick.”
The food safety issues were documented as part of the 2025 Annual Overall Rating (AOR) Report of the park’s concessionaire, Aramark, operating under the name Yosemite Hospitality.
The Mariposa Gazette obtained the report last week from the National Park Service through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)request after it was first reported last month by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Employees reported seeing rats in the Ahwahnee Hotel’s food and beverage areas as well as outdated kitchen facilities that make it harder to properly store, prepare and serve food.
Yosemite Hospitality operates a dozen restaurants and cafeterias in Yosemite. The AOR is based on 35 food safety inspections in 2025.
Public health and operational performance issues dragged down Yosemite Hospitality’s overall rating in the report, leaving it with a “marginal” rating.
It was an improvement, however, over the 2024 AOR in which Yosemite Hospitality received an overall “unsatisfactory” rating.
The stakes are particularly high for Yosemite Hospitality.
An “unsatisfactory” rating, or two consecutive “marginal” ratings in the AOR report, constitutes grounds for termination of the concession contract, which currently runs through 2033.
In an April 14 letter after the review was completed, YNP Superintendent Ray McPadden commended Yosemite Hospitality for its enhanced pre-employment background screening, pest management program and ongoing maintenance program.
But even among the good news, the health and food safety issues stood out starkly.
“Priority attention is needed to correct deficiencies noted in food safety reports, especially unresolved and repeat violations,” McPadden wrote in the letter.
The AOR report also found widespread food storage and waste management violations.
Between January and May of 2025, there were 360 violations, mostly at Curry Village and Housekeeping Camp, the report noted.
Some of the issues included unsecured trash, unattended employee food and improperly latched lockers that resulted in multiple bear encounters.
A review of accommodations at Yosemite Valley Lodge found mildew in bathrooms. Interior carpets, porches, pathways and sidewalks also have yet to be remediated.
Aramark responds
In an interview with the Mariposa Gazette, Brian Hammill, the new Vice President of Operations for Aramark and Yosemite Hospitality, pointed out the review showed significant improvements from the prior year.
Hammill, who has worked in the park for more than 20 years, oversees 1,100 Aramark employees. He has been in his new role for six months.
Hammill said visitors should be reassured that the Ahwahnee Hotel kitchen has “not had any public health concerns beyond the inspection.”
He blamed the food safety issues on an unprecedented period of transition for the Ahwahnee Hotel, as it was coming out of the Covid pandemic, underwent seismic retrofitting of the hotel and a major kitchen renovation.
For most of 2024, the Ahwahnee operated out of a temporary kitchen provided by the National Park Service.
Hammill said the transition issues continued through 2025.
“Food safety processes are really, in my mind, most effective with consistent, everyday, repeatable routines,” he said.
“Is it always going to be 100 percent effective on all fronts? Not necessarily. However, do I firmly believe that everything that we do and what we serve is not presenting a public health threat? Absolutely,” Hammill said.
He said there are action plans underway to make fast and lasting improvements.
With the Yosemite Valley Lodge Base Camp Eatery, Hammill said the issues revolved around personnel changes.
“There were some misses,” he said candidly.
“We actually made things more robust around people and processes to make it more resilient through any personnel changes.”
Joining Hammill in the interview with the Gazette was Sasha Day, president and CEO of Aramark Destinations, which operates lodging, hospitality and recreational services at more than 60 national and state parks.
Day pointed out that the metrics used in the AOR report, across all national parks, use a complex scoring system in which a few deficiencies can overshadow significant improvements.
Of the six evaluation categories, Yosemite Hospitality received a marginal rating in only two categories: Operational performance and public health.
It received a superior rating for risk and environmental management, scoring 100 and 97 percent, and a satisfactory rating for administrative compliance and asset management.
But under the AOR scoring system, two marginal ratings in the six categories automatically means “marginal” becomes the ceiling for the overall evaluation, regardless of the scores received in the other four categories.
“We do take the AOR feedback very seriously, and there are many elements in 2025 that we are very proud of. And two areas where we did not achieve the results that we would like to have achieved,” Day said.
She said 2026 is looking even better.
“I feel like we’re on a great pace this year.”
Responses (0)