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Cliffside pours coffee alongside Muskoka blueberry pancakes at breakfast and sends out a fourteen-ounce ribeye after dark, and it does both from a dining room set three hundred feet above the golf course at Muskoka Bay Resort. It runs a full daypart — breakfast, lunch, and dinner, seven days a week — and it is open to the public rather than held back for overnight guests and club members. That access is what separates it from most resort restaurants: a Gravenhurst dining destination people drive to on its own terms, not an amenity folded into an overnight stay.
Dinner is where the kitchen makes its fullest case. The Cliffside Smokehouse Burger stacks wagyu chuck, smoked pork belly, maple miso, and smoked white cheddar into a single plate of resort comfort, and the steakhouse side holds up its end with filet mignon, rack of lamb, steak frites, and a bone-in ribeye carved thick. The seafood runs more restless: Atlantic salmon in a Thai coconut curry, black cod finished with a maple-miso beurre blanc, lobster folded through bucatini. Short rib pappardelle bridges the two, slow and earthy. Maple miso turns up on both the burger and the cod — a small sign of a kitchen with a handful of moves it trusts and returns to.
The starters are built for a table that wants to share before it commits. A burrata and heirloom tomato salad, seared ahi tuna tataki, and a Thai crab cake make an easy opening trio; baked camembert, warm shrimp lettuce cups, and a BBQ duck leg confit round out a board that reaches from summer-light to cold-weather rich. It is the stretch of the menu where the fusion billing turns literal: Japanese tataki and a Thai crab cake on the same page as baked camembert and duck confit, plated without much fuss over the borders between them.
The daytime carries the same range at lower stakes. Mornings bring Cliffside Eggs Benedict, a steak-and-eggs skillet, avocado toast, and those Muskoka blueberry pancakes; midday shifts to the Carrick Smash Burger — named for the course below the windows — a clubhouse sandwich, Muskoka hot chicken, smoked chicken wings, tuna poke, and fish and chips. Dessert holds the line between comfort and restaurant ambition: banoffee pie, a lemon olive oil cake, crème brûlée. Few kitchens set out to be a weekday breakfast counter and a special-occasion steakhouse on the same day; Cliffside keeps both ends on the board from morning through the last dinner seating.
The setting has been the draw since Cliffside opened in 2014 as the resort's public dining room. West-facing windows run the length of the floor, a patio opens over the fairways when the weather holds from spring into early fall, and a lounge carries the evening past dinner. The kitchen leans on local and seasonal ingredients, a wine list, and a cocktail program built to match the elevation — espresso martinis, bottomless mimosas at weekend brunch. Live music lands midweek and on weekends, Wednesdays through Saturdays in season, which tips the evening from a meal toward a night out.
The clearest route in is the weekend. Every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, five to nine, Cliffside runs a prime rib dinner at fifty-five dollars a person — a fixed reason to make the drive that doubles as the easiest introduction to the kitchen. The rest sorts itself by daylight: breakfast for guests already on the property, lunch out on the patio, dinner timed to the west-facing glass, where the tables along the cliff book out first as the light goes. It is resort dining that chose to keep its doors open to the town below it, on a menu wide enough to be worth the drive back more than once.
Cliffside's strongest differentiator is the setting: the restaurant is positioned above the resort course with the room, lounge, and patio all tied to that view. The food package works best when that setting is treated as part of the booking, not just background scenery.
The current menu has enough steak and seafood weight to support special-occasion dinners without becoming a formal steakhouse. 14oz Ribeye, Black Cod, Atlantic Salmon, and Steak Frites are the dishes that define that lane.
Cliffside covers more than one use case: breakfast, lunch, dinner, patio drinks, and weekend Prime Rib Dinner all sit under the same public restaurant identity. That range matters because diners can use it for a golf day, a planned dinner, or a resort-style stop without changing venues.
This is Restaurantica’s own read — synthesized from publicly available sources across diner signal and editorial research, last updated July 2026. It’s our interpretation of the evidence, not a crowd average — and placement is never for sale.
Cliffside works best when the view is part of the booking. The room, patio, and dinner menu give couples a planned-night feel without making the meal overly formal.
This is the Gravenhurst pick for a meal that needs scenery, a full dinner rhythm, and enough menu weight to feel intentional. 14oz Ribeye, Black Cod, and the weekend Prime Rib Dinner all support that use case.
The visual draw is built into the restaurant rather than added after the fact. Cliffside's elevated course view, patio, and polished dinner plates make the setting easy to remember.
The patio is part of the point here, especially when the weather and timing line up. Cliffside gives diners a resort-view outdoor option with a real lunch and dinner menu behind it.
The kitchen's local-ingredient framing gives the resort setting a food story beyond the view. It is most convincing when attached to the current steak, seafood, and seasonal dessert choices.
Restaurantica’s write-up above is synthesized from broad public signal — community reviews add the first-person layer. Share the nuances of your visit to Cliffside at Muskoka Bay Resort in Gravenhurst: the standout dishes, the room, the service.
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