Mission Inn Restaurant: What’s Vegetarian Editorial Review

Mission Inn Restaurant sits inside the Mission Inn Hotel & Spa, the century-old Spanish Gothic landmark that anchors downtown Riverside. Prime rib, pork chops, and a $42 ribeye headline the dinner menu. Yet this is also one of the few kitchens in the metro that marks its vegetarian dishes right on the page instead of making you guess.

The menu runs a printed code: “VEG” for vegetarian, plus separate marks for dairy free, gluten free, and nut free. Every dish carries whichever tags apply. You’re not cross-referencing ingredients in your head while a server waits. That’s the difference between “marks vegetarian items” and “vegetarian-friendly” on this site’s scale, and Mission Inn earns the first one.

Lunch keeps it light on the vegetarian side. The Truffle Fries ($12) and the Farmer’s Market Crudités ($16) both carry the nut-free and vegetarian tags, but neither is a full meal. Dinner does more. The Sweet Basil Pesto Campanelle at $20 is tagged vegetarian, though it does contain nuts, so check that if you’re allergic and not just meat-averse. The Roasted Mushroom Tartine at $22 carries the same vegetarian and nut-free tags as a starter. That pasta is the one dish here built to be an actual vegetarian entree, not a workaround.

Everything else leans hard into meat and seafood. Shrimp ceviche. Pacific oysters. Ahi tuna crudo. Halibut fish and chips. Lobster mac and cheese. A kurobuta pork chop. This is a hotel dining room feeding a broad American crowd first, and the vegetarian tagging reads as a courtesy layered on top rather than a design choice. Four marked vegetarian dishes across lunch and dinner, one of which is an entree. That’s the whole count.

Setting matters here as much as the plate does. You’re eating on a Spanish patio with both indoor and outdoor seating, inside a hotel that’s a National Historic Landmark. Breakfast runs 7 to 11 a.m. on weekdays, and Sunday brings a brunch buffet from 10 to 3. Worth knowing if the occasion counts for something: a business breakfast, an anniversary lunch, a stop before checking into the hotel itself.

Reservations are accepted and recommended. The restaurant takes cash, credit, and debit, and takeout is available, though a tasting-room dinner setting isn’t the natural pick for a to-go order.

Order the Sweet Basil Pesto Campanelle for a proper vegetarian dinner. Or split the Roasted Mushroom Tartine and the Truffle Fries at a table that’s mostly ordering ribeye and pork chop. Skip Mission Inn if you want a dedicated vegetarian kitchen, because that isn’t what this is. What it is: a fine-dining hotel restaurant that tells you exactly which four dishes work for you, which beats most places charging $30 for an entree and leaving you to guess.

Price band runs high. Dinner entrees span $20 to $42, and lunch mains sit in the high teens to low twenties. Call 951-784-0300 for reservations.