I've Eaten My Way Through Montana. Here's What 'Yellowstone' Gets Wrong About Food In The West
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Like many other people, I've been sucked into the Yellowstone cinematic universe. While the drama is juicy, I've mostly been absorbed by the show's food, not unlike how someone might binge-watch The Bear. I'm not alone here, either, especially with the release of Yellowstone: The Official Cookbook, the new Yellowstone food line, and fans' very much warranted obsession with Chef Gator.
However, as someone who has eaten my way along the Snake and Yellowstone Rivers, waited tables on a guest ranch in Montana, and bartended for actual ranchers, I have noticed just a few things the show hasn't quite nailed about the food in the region. Especially as influencers move to the area to cosplay their own version of the Dutton family, some visitors to Wyoming might just be surprised how much more there is to this portion of the West. And though it might seem like the culinary scene there is all about cowboy stew and hulking steaks with foreboding strings playing in the background, I'm here to set the record straight.
Cattle is king in Montana and Wyoming, but that's not all.
To this day, if you ask me where I've had the best pastries, fresh tomatoes, and beer in my life, I actually would not immediately say Paris, Rome, or Dublin. Instead, I'd say Montana and Wyoming.
"I think people are surprised all the time," says Gavin Fine, one of the owners of the Jackson Hole-based Fine Dining Restaurant Group. "I mean, obviously I have an oyster bar also...But listen, we're so close to the West Coast, right? It's like, we're right there [next to Washington]. So people look and they're like, 'Oh, how fresh is this?' I'm like, dude, it was out of the water yesterday."
Even if the area is still solidly meat-and-potatoes land, this is a part of the country that has as many food nerds as you might expect in larger cities like New York or LA. And that's not nothing. After all, Montana and Wyoming rank 3rd and 4th respectively on a list of states with the largest amount of breweries per capita and have a new generation of ranchers taking the reins.
"We got more cows than people out here," says Fine, who adds that ranching has also had a resurgence in the area, making it more viable for smaller ranches to thrive, providing fresh cuts of beef to the region with a more sustainable bent.
But ranching isn't everything.
With a terrain as rugged (and riddled with bears) as the Rockies, it would make sense that some of the most prized commodities of the area cannot simply be farmed or ranched. No, most of these gems can only be foraged or hunted, like huckleberries, elk, and mushrooms.
Many of the iconic dishes of the area go well beyond the farm-to-table, rustic aesthetic of Yellowstone. River-to-table and forest-to-table items should also be on the menu. My short list is very long: There's the elk burger at The Corral in Gardiner, near Yellowstone's north entrance. And then you can grab elk tostadas or trout beignets (okay, elk and trout everything) at The Bistro in Jackson. Perhaps next you could bike up for a round of boozy "Sloshies" from Jackson Hole Still Works or a Katabatic IPA in Bozeman. For dessert you can grab a scoop of "Bear Scat" ice cream from Sweet Peaks (don't worry, it's just fudge and dried blueberries). You can even grab some bison and pork huckleberry sausage near the national parks at Bodega, or a huckleberry ice cream from Wilcoxson's. And that's just scratching the surface.
As ranchers, the Duttons (and their storylines) sometimes miss out on how food can be a larger-than-life character in the show.
Like The Bear told the story of Chicago and Carmy with its Italian Beef Sandwich, and White Lotus and Succession were often just plain wasteful (or kind of gross) with food, Yellowstone hesitates to have a POV on food that goes beyond the typical meat and potatoes. Even though the Duttons certainly have their own unique relationship to food (see: Beth's vodka "smoothies," the fruit salad that helps with John's prostate problems, Gator's grilled octopus for their "Mediterranean diet"), the show misses out on the full wealth of the area's offerings.
"People really forget what grows naturally there, that isn't just meat and potatoes, you know?" says Fine, who has been a resident of Jackson for 30-plus years. "It didn't happen when I first moved here. It didn't. That was not what was going on, you know? But it is now...It keeps getting refined and more and more. Just like anything, right?"
Maybe it's the glacier water, maybe its the elevation-induced adoration (or Maybelline), but the culinary scene that's emerging in Big Sky Country is one to watch, and one I hope will become a plot point all its own in any of the many (many!) Yellowstone spin-offs on the horizon.
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