4
#4 in Sun Valley
The Ram
Sun Valley's original restaurant since 1937 — where Marilyn Monroe and Bing Crosby once sat, and the fondue still flows.
8.8Food
9.5Ambience
7.5Value
Averell Harriman built Sun Valley Resort in 1936, and The Ram opened alongside the Lodge in 1937. Almost ninety years later, it remains the most historically significant restaurant in Idaho — a room that has fed presidents, film stars, Nobel laureates, and Olympic athletes, and shows no sign of slowing. Marilyn Monroe, Bing Crosby, Gary Cooper, Ernest Hemingway, and Clint Eastwood are among those who have dined in this room. The guest book, if it existed, would read like a twentieth-century American cultural history.
The food is the point. The nightly Heritage Menu resurrects dishes from The Ram's long culinary tradition: the Ram fondue (gruyere, melted tableside, the correct way), pork tenderloin schnitzel, Hungarian goulash with spaetzle, stuffed pheasant in season, and Idaho lamb prepared in the old resort style. These are not ironic or nostalgic gestures; they are genuinely excellent dishes that have survived because they merit it. The standard menu adds contemporary Idaho ingredients — local trout, wild game, fresh seafood from Pacific suppliers — to a classical American continental framework.
Live piano accompanies every dinner service. The pianist begins before the first seating and continues through the final course — an old-fashioned amenity that the most fashionable New York restaurants cannot replicate, because they have never had it. The music is unobtrusive and correct: American standards, light jazz, the occasional classical piece when the room calls for it.
The room itself — warm wood, deep leather, firelight in winter — is the culmination of a century of resort hospitality design. It was recently modernised while preserving its iconic character: the same proportions, the same materials, updated lighting and comfort without removing what makes it what it is. The bar is excellent, the wine list comprehensive, and the service precisely calibrated to the expectations of guests who have been coming here for decades.
The Ram is rated 4.7 stars by over 1,000 OpenTable diners and 4.3 on Tripadvisor. It is open Wednesday through Sunday from 5pm. Reservations are strongly recommended for weekend evenings during ski season.
The Ram's combination of historical gravity, live piano, and heritage menu makes it the valley's most fitting room for milestone celebrations — birthdays with decades behind them, anniversaries, retirement dinners, and any occasion that deserves weight and permanence. The nightly fondue order, shared tableside, has opened hundreds of celebrations in this room. The staff understand milestone diners and deliver accordingly: unhurried, attentive, and genuinely hospitable rather than mechanically so. For impressing clients, The Ram's reputation communicates authority and taste without a word of explanation — the oldest restaurant in Sun Valley carries its own credential.
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