The Cove Cafe

First time on Angel Island! Hurrah! Can’t believe it took me this long to visit after living here for so many years. Went on the 5 mile hike and our ferry back was hours away. I don’t know why I thought I wouldn’t be hungry but I was ravenous after the hike. We didn’t bring anything besides a couple snacks so we ended up buying food here although we did consider trying to buy a hot dog off the 500 people who came purely to BBQ and picnic on the island.
The line is pretty long and slow moving. They serve typical café foods plus local wines and beer which is nice. I got the veggie wrap which is basically an entire wrap of coleslaw. To be fair it was huge but unlike any wrap I’ve ever gotten.
This was the only place open so options are limited. Considering this, they could be charging way more for their food but prices are pretty reasonable. My friend got a big turkey corndog for only $ 5. The beer is $ 4 and my wrap was $ 9. I thought about getting the tuna melt but read a review about how horrible it was and didn’t want to spent $ 15 on a bad sandwich.
We were able to get a table but it got pretty cut throat with this crazy woman trying to take our table when we had zero plans to leave. Make sure to get there as early as you can before the ferry comes because it will definitely get packed. Self serve water and condiments. The yellow mustard pump was actually dijon. One bottle of hot sauce for all diners.
Best part of this place is the view

Surprisingly good food. Salads are tasty, buffalo chicken wraps are huge. Good selection of healthy food. Son even said that turkey corn dog was good

Who knew the food could be so great at a Concessionaire. Plan to have lunch or? And rest your feet! I had the Cubano sandwich with potato salad. Excellent! My husband had the Bar-​b-​Que pork sandwich. Yummy! I saw an order of Nachos go by… Holy Smokes!!!

I have been here twice and both times their kitchen was closed at 3 pm. If you walk the island and start right when the first ferry comes in by the time you look at everything it takes several hours. I was not a happy camper to walk 4.5 hours and have a closed kitchen. Their café should stock premade sushi or something other than just ice cream if they are going to close their kitchen early.

Have you ever been so hungry that when you finally take a bite out of something, it’s tastes so good? Or have you ever said to someone, «Not sure if I’m just hungry, but this is hella good?»
Well at Cove Café, I did not have this experience. My husband and I were doing the Alcatraz and Angel Island tour. We were suppose to wake up early to pick up some focaccia bread from a well known place in San Francisco, but we left a little later than planned and didn’t have time or else we would miss our ferry ride.
It has been about 20 hours since we last ate something and both of us was starving! After our tram tour ended, the only place to eat on Angel island was this place.
I ordered a bottled water, a tuna melt, and a bag of chips. My husband ordered a Corona, a bag of chips, and a sandwich called the Cristo. Which cost me $ 40 even.
The tuna melt came on white bread, but on the description it said whole wheat. The tuna was so watery that it kept dripping out of the sandwich. It was very bland.
My husband’s sandwich had ham, cheese, bacon on a ciabatta roll. He did not finish his sandwich. In fact, he had half of his sandwich left! I asked him what was wrong. He just said it didn’t taste very good. I gave it a try. He was right. The ciabatta was a bit rough. His sandwich had this weird taste to it. It tasted like a cleaning product would smell like. It was disgusting.
Even being that starving, it still tasted like crap. My husband even made a comment saying, «well doesn’t what amusement park places do? They get the cheapest quality food and is way overpriced!» He got that right!

I would recommend you pack a lunch or try the taco/​burger joint across from it.
The hummus tasted like water, the crostini tasted stale. The soup of the day, potato and onion, was also watery and relied on a lot of pepper. The cole slaw and potato salad were dressed in an unknown reddish vinegar dressing. The corn bread??? I guess it was corn bread, it looked like corn bread but tasted like a floral pound cake.
Let’s not debate the fried chicken, let’s just say it too was off the mark.
If your going to eat here, grab a bottled beverage and a bag of chips… that’s as good as it will get.

Ate here on my Angel Island /​Alcatraz tour, had the Cubano sandwich to-​go. Definitely pricey at $ 14, but the place is on an island (food has to be transported there), so seems fairly priced. Sandwich was very good, came with a side of potato salad. Potato salad also pretty good, but they give you a tiny amount.

You definitely pay «island» prices when you get here, but this is one of the few times that certainly surprised me!
After the long 5-​mile hike around the island, we decided to kill some time waiting for our ferry. The original plan was to get a few beers and just hang out. We perched up on the patio bar and just people watched. We got the BBQ pork sandwich. Definitely not the cheapest thing on the menu, however I was very, very impressed!
Not sure about the other items on their menu… I would have to defer to others on that. But if you want a place for a beer while killing some time, think about coming here!

This place was amazingly good. I was a bit skeptical, as it was the only dining choice on the island, but everything is made fresh, so if there’s something you don’t want on your food they can do that, and it tasted good too. I would definitely say this is a good place to eat.

Back again. Have the island basically to myself. After bike rental, had the Cubano sandwich and two coronas, and seriously:
THIS IS THE BEST SANDWICH IN THE BAY AREA.
Carry on…

What a gorgeous location! It may be the only restaurant on the island, but they chose the perfect place for it. Right there in the cove, it is well protected from the winds. The patio is the perfect place to relax and watch the boats in the harbor. I really enjoyed the bbq pulled pork sandwich while my boyfriend had the Cuban. Both were delicious. The prices are a little high which is to be expected as everything has to be brought over. Honestly there is nothing better than grabbing a cool drink and a snack while watching the harbor in the sun after a long afternoon of hiking and biking. There is even live music on the weekends!

I rediscovered Angel Island this past Sunday and did a 8 mi hike with my boyfriend. It was a gorgeous day and after running around the island we had some time to kill before our ferry arrived. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the Cove Café served wine. We sat there enjoying the beginning of a sunset sipping our wine. It’s a great place to hang out especially when the winter schedule only has one ferry coming to the island and one leaving from SF.

I’ve only been here once, but I wasn’t thrilled at all by anything here. The island is a great place to picnic, and it may be wise to do so.
My family was not impressed by any of the food here, and as soon as I walked in I was surprised for a second at the prices for these sandwiches. hot dogs, etc. But then I did remember — it’s on an island, and there are only a couple places to get food. Of course they’ll charge higher prices.
If you like it for convenience, then by all means, feel free to try them for lunch. I don’t think you’ll be missing anything if you don’t, however.

The Cove Café sells lots of sandwiches, beers, water drinks and gifts such as tshirts, magnets and etc.
This is also the same place to get the tickets for the Tram Tour ride…
Everything is much more expensive, but what did you expect, after all, there are transportation fees to be added… almost the same as Great America…
The only we did notice were the bees, tons of them and the seagulls, all trying to get at your food and drinks… you have to protect your goodies…
So if you didn’t bring a picnic, or pack a sandwich, this is the place to get all your needs and the only place… well worth it…

Yay! I’m a fan. I can’t believe the hater reviews — ?
1. This is an island. Everything needs to be ferried over. Beer, wine and food!
2. The tour guide said the café grows its produce on the island. How cool is that?
3. My group was very pleasantly surprised at the quality, quantity and prices of the food. The wrap was a shareable size. BBQ and raw oysters prepared well and with tasty condiments. Potato dish was yummy too.
4. Beer! Wine! $ 5 – 10 glass. Suck it up and buy it here or schelp it over yourself on the ferry.
5. No nasty hamburger patties, icky processed cheese, hot dogs on one of those 7 – 11 wheelie things, dehydrated potato «french fries» or any other food that «should be in quotes» because the quality is so atrocious and doesn’t look like the real thing.
Either bring all your own food and picnic or enjoy the tasty food (and fun music!) at the Cove Café on FABULOUS, jewel-​in-​our-​own-​backyard Angel Island.

Definitely bring food when you come to Angel Island! The food sold on the island is overpriced and pretty much gross.
It appears to look decent, but it’s a complete waste of money! Especially if you come with your family, you could easily drop $ 50 on bad quality food. We shared their sandwich «special» the Tiburon Cristo. It basically had: Hearthstone Ham, Provolone Cheese, Grilled Onions all on a Ciabatta with Potato Salad on the side.
The Hearthstone Ham sounded really good, like o0o what kind of ham is that? I want to try! but honestly it was just like the deli ham you buy at the store. There was nothing special about this sandwich at all! It was dripping in this weird sauce that was so tasteless. The Ciabatta tasted like the pack of bread you buy from Costco (they are good though!).
The Potato Salad just looked awful… The food was overall a disappointment. I felt like I was just in-​taking unnecessary calories for food lacking in so much flavor and taste. And get this, the sandwich was $ 13! The portions were so dinky!
I guess I can see why it might be hard to serve good food on an island, the difficulty in transporting food from the main lands.
Order a take out pizza or something and carry it on the boat to share with your friends!

I feel the same way about this place like I do most places at Disneyland. It’s always over priced but occasionally they do a nice enough job to make you forget you’re stuck on an island (here literally, Disneyland figuratively) and that you’re getting gouged on the price. I split the salad special (Little gem with Pt. Reyes blue cheese, spiced nuts, and cherries) and the veggie wrap. Service was slow but given that they have you captive they do a fair job of presenting solid food that offers a cut above «park food.»

The burger I had was pretty awesome. Grilled Cheeseburger with mushrooms and onions and was pretty fresh. The sandwiches here are mediocre, expected from a state park food stand. Nachos were decent but nothing special.
Honestly, the burger and the oysters were the best thing, but still only average when it comes to the grand scheme of things.
Maybe try bringing ur own food and having a picnic…

Food sucks. Veggie wrap was ½ a head of iceberg lettuce, a few strings of roasted red pepper, and ¼ artichoke heart (one in each half). There is an undetectable smear of hummus and yogurt sauce. All wrapped in a white tortilla. It was dry and need more sauce of some sort so I paid a dollar for extra sauce and they gave a plastic ramekin of cucumber slices in a yogurt dressing (this is not a yogurt sauce, this is just CUCUMBERS), and a tablespoon if hummus. Hardly worth it.
When I returned to the table, BEES had taken over so I let them have it ALL. Big suck.
PACK YOUR OWN LUNCH!

I’m not sure about the other reviews, but my friend and I had a great experience at the Cove Café! We were hesitant at first since this was the only place you can buy food on Angel Island, so we were expecting overpriced, mediocre food. Luckily we were wrong! We wanted to snack a bit before starting our day on Angel Island, who knew we were getting a feast! (Check out the photo I posted) We ordered a tuna melt, nachos, and garlic fries. The food came in HUGE portions, especially the nachos. I think we could have been fine just ordering the nachos alone. The nachos were delicious and had tons of toppings. The garlic fries were SO GOOD because there was soooo much garlic on them (in a good way, of course). The tuna melt was also delicious, but by the time I had them, I was stuffed! We literally had to sit for 30 minutes just to rest from all the food we ate. I also love how they sell alcoholic beverages, which were overpriced, but hey, what do you expect? They gotta make their money somehow. Overall, we had a good experience here and definitely would order the nachos again if we ever decide to come back to Angel Island.