Category Archives: Restaurants

Two Gems in British Columbia’s Interior

Montana Marathon: A Mad Dash Through Kalispell and Whitefish

The Pocketsone Cafe is a lovely place for breakfast in Bigfork, Montana

Finally, on the homestretch of this month-long eating excursion, I kick things into high gear, gorging on a half dozen meals in one day. And you wonder where the Marathon Mouth label comes from?

Healthy grain porridge at Woods Bay Grill near Bigfork, Montana

I start things off at 6 am with, a rarity on this trip, a truly healthy breakfast, and in the unlikeliest of places. First, the meal, a hearty bowl of Cream of the West at Woods Bay Grill, near Bigfork, on the northeast corner of massive Flathead Lake. This hot cereal boasts these virtuous grains: Montana oats, hard red spring wheat, barley, rye, triticale, soft white wheat, spelt and bran, with a side of toast. Now the place—a little roadside diner, the walls lined with deer racks and wildlife art, the latter for sale. The rest of the breakfast fare is your traditional eggs and not-so-healthy biscuits with gravy and chicken-fried steak. But to show this tasty seven-grain cereal isn’t a lonely outlier on the menu, there’s also house-made, low-sugar jams for the toast.

Woods Bay Grill
14509 Highway 35, about 4 miles south of Bigfork, Montana
Daily 6 am-7 pm

I must say *Pocketstone Café, on the northeast shore of Flathead Lake, is a wonderful place to have breakfast (for your reading pleasure, it’s my second in just over an hour). The rough-hewn wall planks and hardwood floors and tables are matched by a big, central espresso bar fronted by a display case featuring mouthwatering deep-dish fruit pies, chewy oatmeal-raisin cookies and mammoth cupcakes. It’s also a warm, friendly place with an accommodating staff. The waitress is happy to let me mix and match the buttermilk and orange pancakes (great honey-maple and huckleberry syrups), with a side order of thick, meaty bacon. She also has the cook redo the order when it isn’t to her satisfaction. It’s nice to see the owner of a fairly new restaurant admitting on the website that things have improved since the opening and can continue to get better. Judging by the waiting times on many summer mid-mornings, they’re doing a damn fine job already.

Buttermilk and orange pancakes and bacon at Pocketstone Cafe. Mmm!

Pocketstone Cafe
444 Electric Avenue, Bigfork, Montana
Daily 6 am-3 pm

Continuing with my healthy eating trend, I pull into Bonelli’s Bistro in Kalispell and go straight past the usual lunch standards of paninis, wraps and sandwiches, though the homemade meatball sub looks tempting. Instead, I focus on a list of 10 salads and decide on one featuring a mound of organic mixed greens topped with quinoa, tabbouleh and hummus and a fan of rice crisps. It’s very nourishing and a nice late-morning palette cleanser, though the tahini dressing is a little astringent for my taste—that, and an obtrusive sound track.

Nice salad at Bonelli’s Bistro in Kalispell

Bonelli’s Bistro
38 1 Avenue East, Kalispell
Monday to Saturday 8 am-3pm. Closed Sunday

Another popular place for lunch in Kalispell is Wheat Montana Bakery & Deli, a sister company of the one near Three Forks, Montana. It offers massive cinnamon rolls, hearty soups and sandwiches and even bags of flour for purchase. Needing to pace myself, I save this for another trip.

Wheat Montana Bakery & Deli
405 South Main Street, Kalispell
Monday to Saturday 6 am- 6 pm, Sunday 8 am-4 pm

And then there’s Moose’s Saloon, little changed since I first visited four decades ago. The wooden booths, walls, and pillars are still blanketed in carved initials; the floor is still covered in sawdust (don’t wear Crocs, like I do) and there’s still great bags of free peanuts in the shell; just spit the shells on the floor, like everyone else. Once your eyes adjust to the gloom, grab a beer and maybe a pizza and soak up the atmosphere. There’s no place like it.

The famous swinging doors at Moose’s Saloon in Kalispell

Moose’s Saloon
173 North Main Street, Kalispell
Opens at 11 am

A few miles north, Whitefish is a more charming town than Kalispell, thanks to its smaller size, compact historic downtown and more upscale status at the foot of Whitefish Mountain Resort.

If you’re going to make audacious claims, you’d better be able to back them up. Fortunately, Amazing Crepes lives up to its name. Essentially, it pulls it off by doing one thing very well and adding some creativity to the process. The simple menu is broken into two parts: savoury crepes and sweet crepes. The former includes a couple with eggs, one with wild smoked salmon and another with fresh pears, gorgonzola and toasted almonds. The latter features a fresh fruit and granola crepe and one with Nutella and banana. A few minutes after I order, a golden-brown crepe arrives, buttery smooth and filled with rich, interesting flavours. The only thing that keeps me from awarding a * is my lovely brie, pesto and spinach crepe is a little salty for my taste. But on the whole, this is a great place for something fresh, light and inventive. And it’s good that things are light, as I have to pace myself for the day’s two remaining meals.

The crepes are indeed awesome at Amazing Crepes in Whitefish

Amazing Crepes
123 Central Avenue, Whitefish
Weekdays 8 am-4 pm, weekends 8 am-3 pm

You’d think it would be hard to distinguish yourself if you offered the usual lunchtime fare of paninis, wraps and salads, especially if you’re located in a nondescript strip mall on the main drag of Columbia Falls, just outside of Whitefish. Yet *The Palette Cafe pulls it off, and they do it the usual way: with imagination, attention to detail and presentation. Take, for instance, the first-class ingredients in my BLT panini—perfectly crusted bread enveloping maple bacon, truffle bechamel, sharp cheddar and arugula. The extra details are a lovely little cup of house-made mustard, an unusually shaped water glass and my ability to combine a half panini with a small salad of hummus, walnuts, spinach and nicely warmed pita triangles. The presentation is enhanced by the artistic way everything is laid out on the plate. A final nice gesture is when one co-owner (a young couple owns the place and her parents help out) sees the panini slopping around my face, as usual, and brings over a couple more napkins.

Fabulous BLT panini and salad at The Palette Cafe in Columbia Falls

The Palette Cafe
743 9 Street West, Columbia Falls
Tuesday to Friday 7:30 am-4 pm, Saturday 11 am-3 pm. Closed Sunday and Monday

You know the importance of first impressions? Well, *Pescado Blanco has me hooked with the arrival of a basket of warm, slightly oily tortilla chips, accompanied by a middling-fiery roasted pepper salsa. It’s all I can do to stop eating them and leave some room for the main course. Fortunately, I only order a couple of their polo tacos, featuring chunks of tender chicken seared in ancho chile and served on handmade white corn tortillas. The accompanying black beans and rice are a decided step up from your typical Mexican plate fillers. I can see why Shelley Adams, author of the terrific Whitewater Cooks books, calls Pescado Montana’s best Mexican restaurant.

First-class polo tacos at Pescado Blanco in Whitefish. I’ve already decimated the basket of fresh tortilla chips.

Pescado Blanco
235 1 Street, Whitefish
Daily 5 pm to close

Montana Coffee Traders runs a small empire in the Whitefish area. From its roastery, established south of town in the prehistoric year of 1981, to coffee bars in Whitefish, Kalispell and Columbia Falls, the company keeps locals well caffeinated. The downtown Whitefish location is jumping in late afternoon, and my potent, full-bodied Americano should keep me awake as I make my dash for the Canadian border, the day’s mountain of food gurgling through my distended belly during the long drive through the night.

Getting a final caffeine jolt at Montana Coffee Traders before my long drive into the night

Montana Coffee Traders
110 Central Avenue, Whitefish
Monday to Saturday 7 am-6 pm am, Sunday 9-5 pm

Sliding Into Missoula, Montana

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Road-trip driving occasionally produces white knuckles

I’m a little jittery to fully enjoy my lunch at Pueblo Lindo, in McCall, Idaho. It’s not the usual three cups of road coffee jangling around an acidic stomach that does it. It’s the two hours of white-knuckle driving to get here in a late October snowstorm, traveling in a 25-mile-per-hour (40 kmh) convoy, hoping we’re going fast enough that I can get up any icy hills in summer tires and using the white van in front of me as a guide to see the road as the “window” created by the slush-encrusted wipers keeps getting smaller and smaller. So by the time I pull up to Pueblo Lindo for a nerve-calming break, it’s all I can do to properly taste the decent chicken burrito with rice and beans, the best part being the accompanying basket of warm tortilla chips with a piquant house-made salsa (all for a bargain $5). By the time I finish, the road’s been plowed, and I can renew the long drive to the next meal. By the way, the McCall public library charges $2 for 15 minutes of Wi-Fi access for non-cardholders. Someone should report them to the Gates Foundation!

Chicken burrito at Pueblo Lindo in McCall, Idaho

Pueblo Lindo
1007 West Lake Street, McCall, Idaho
Daily 11 am-9 pm

Fabulous driving along the Salmon River on Highway 95 north of McCall, Idaho

Missoula is a charming college town (population 68,000) with a foothills backdrop and the Clark Fork River dividing the downtown from the rest of the city. But the University of Montana certainly doesn’t encourage motoring visitors; it’s almost impossible to park within a mile of the place without a university or residential parking permit. And the street-naming system is downright weird; an example from below is South 4th Street West (if you’re going to have a quadrant system, follow Calgary’s lead and go, for instance, with SW). The city’s food scene, though, is lively, with a number of fine places you can drive right up to.

I’ve already heralded Bob Marshall’s Biga Pizza as one of the best pizzerias in the mountain west (241 West Main Street. Weekdays 11 am-3 pm and 5 pm-9:30 pm, Saturday 5 pm-10 pm). It’s here that I first encounter the outstanding *KettleHouse Cold Smoke Scotch Ale, which because of arcane state laws on microbrewery production limits is for now pretty much only available in western Montana. So, of course, I have to visit the character-filled KettleHouse Brewing Company’s taproom, where an afternoon crowd is gathered to sample a pint or fill a larger “growler” to go. Here’s another bit of strange state law: A small brewery taproom can only serve a patron 48 ounces of beer between the hours of 10 am and 8 pm. Other FAQs from the Kettlehouse website: “Can you ship me some beer? No. Sorry. Plan a vacation in beautiful Missoula instead.” “Do you have food in your tap rooms? No. But you can bring in your own.” Note: Their “six-packs” are four, 16-ounce cans.

Funky taproom at KettleHouse Brewing Company in Missoula

KettleHouse Brewing Company
602 Myrtle Street, Missoula
Daily noon to 8 pm

There’s definitely something to be said for keeping things simple and doing one or two things well. Le Petit Outre (“The Little Outrageous”) has that nailed. As a small bakery, it produces a wide variety of excellent handcrafted breads—ryes, baguettes, cocodrillos, ciabattas and the like, some baked in a French hearth oven—as well as pastries and nice buttery, flaky croissants to munch on. It also has fine coffee, whether it’s a nice strong blend from a pump pot or a well-crafted cappuccino from its Synesso espresso machine. In good weather, there are a few tables outside; otherwise, it’s takeout.

Le Petit Outre
129 South 4 Street West
Monday to Friday 7 am-6 pm, Saturday 8 am-3 pm, Sunday 8 am-2 pm

There aren’t many places I’d frequent simply to sit in the space, ordering latte after pour over just so I don’t have to leave. *Caffe Dolce is such a place, with its tile floor, light orange walls and high ceiling reminiscent of a centuries-old Italian building. Actually, owner Peter Lambros had it built only a few years ago, though an Italian artist did spend a Michelangelo-like 750 hours on a scaffold to paint the ceiling (a side room is lined with Italian pottery for sale). One of the baristas says she loves working here, especially on a wintery day, when the high windows make the space feel like a giant snow globe. By the way, they make good coffees here, along with iron-grilled sandwiches, a large selection of gelato and, something of a rarity, a bowl of fresh breakfast fruit. Just order things one at a time, so you can spread your stay out.

Caffe Dolce, a great place to hang out in Missoula

Caffe Dolce
500 Brooks Street (the one described here) and 2901 Brooks Street (Southgate Mall), Missoula
Check the website for hours, which are too confusing to list here

The Montana pasty (paste-ee) is supposed to be the preserve of Butte. It’s where English-born miners carried their Cornish pasties underground in lunch buckets. I guess no one told Lisa she couldn’t take the Butte tradition to Missoula and open Lisa’s Pasty Pantry. Some folks say her version of the meat-filled pastry pocket is better. I can only tell you it’s a mighty tasty pasty: a bunch of hand-cubed beef, potatoes and onions packed into a crimped pastry and then baked till golden. Add a little gravy if you want, and you’ve got a filling lunch for a bargain $6. Though they seemed a little insulted when I don’t finish things off with one of their fruit turnovers.

A hearty pasty quells the lunchtime hunger pangs at Lisa’s Pasty Pantry

Lisa’s Pasties
2004 West Sussex Avenue, Missoula
Monday to Friday 11 am-7 pm, Saturday 10:30 am to close. Closed Sunday

Death by sandwich? There are worse ways to go. In fact, the amount of mortadella and dough I’ve already consumed this trip might cause my porcine valves to seize up. But when I see the Megadeath sandwich on the Tagliare Delicatessen menu board, I’m powerless to resist. Mercifully, I only order the $9 half loaf, er, sandwich. The whole would be enough to choke a horse, if a horse ate ham, finocchiona (whatever that is), hot sopressata, pepperoni, hot capicola and various other things pressed between two hunks of ciabatta and sawn in half. Some of the meats and/or the “feisty” vinaigrette give this sandwich the slight kick of a mule. If that’s insufficient meat for you, consider the Zeppelin, an unholy alliance of roast beef, turkey, salami, ham and pastrami. Way down the menu, there is a vegetarian option, featuring goat cheese and pickled beets. These takeout sandwiches can be messy, so take care how you eat them.

I’m still kicking after finishing the Megadeath half sandwich at Tagliare Delicatessen

Tagliare Delicatessen
1433 South Higgins Avenue, Missoula
Monday 10 am-5 pm, Tuesday to Friday 10 am-7 pm, Saturday 10 am-5 pm. Closed Sunday

My Own Private Idaho Eating Tour

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Spectacular Snake River Gorge in Twin Falls, Idaho. Can’t think of any other western U.S. city that can match this view

If you’re making the long drive on I-84 between Salt Lake City and Boise, Idaho, be sure to find time for a short detour to Twin Falls. It has the most spectacular viewpoint you’ll find in any city: the Snake River Gorge. From the visitor centre beside the superb bridge spanning the canyon, it’s a gut-churning drop to the river far below and not far from Evel Knievel’s failed attempt to jump the canyon by motorcycle in 1974.

Sometimes, it’s just one overlooked detail that keeps you from thoroughly enjoying your breakfast. At Buffalo Cafe, it’s the biscuit. The eggs over easy are nicely done, the house-made chorizo sausage is tasty and the hash browns decent. But the hefty biscuit arrives cold. Maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be, but the butter sits in an unmelted lump on top and even the nice touch of homemade jam doesn’t quite salvage things. A minute in the toaster or on the grill, and all would have been well. Buffalo Cafe is all by itself in an unlit industrial part of town, with a row of big truck cabs across the street in a compound.

Nice enough breakfast, other than the cold biscuit, at Buffalo Cafe in Twin Falls, Idaho

Buffalo Cafe
218 4 Avenue, Twin Falls
Daily 7 am-2 pm

It’s not often I’ll wait an hour for a sandwich, especially when I’m the only customer in said sandwich shop. But I’m glad I do at *High Country Bakehouse on charming Main Avenue in downtown Twin Falls. The wait is largely my fault, as the coffee is on when I arrive at the 8 am opening, but the sandwiches aren’t due out for a couple of hours. Which gives me a chance to chat with owner Aaron Adams, a former psychology major who opened the bakery/sandwich shop a year ago, with the mandate to make everything from scratch. Thus his sourdough bread takes three days from start to finish. And his cousin Sara, who prepares all the meat for the sandwiches, marinates the turkey in Guinness and the New York strip steak in red wine before cooking and then slicing them. I order a half BLT, savouring every bite of the hickory-smoked bacon and vine-ripened tomato inside the chewy sourdough. To go, I take a loaf of honey whole wheat, too hot from the oven to bag and thus filling my car with a heavenly odour that almost overpowers the stench from three weeks of car camping.

High Country Bakehouse
144 Main Avenue South, Twin Falls
Monday to Friday 8 am-3 pm. Closed weekends

While waiting for the day’s sandwich making to begin, I also talk to Paul Graff, who’s just moved into Bakehouse’s premises to set up his Twin Beans Coffee Co. He pours me a fresh cup of his day’s blend. Tastes pretty damn fine to me, but he grimaces slightly with his first sip. He’s not happy with the city water supply and how the required filtering will affect the dissolved solids in his brew. Some tweaking will be required. Got to love that passion for perfection.

Boise, Idaho’s state capital, is a surprisingly modern, prosperous city—population 200,000-plus/over 600,000 in the metropolitan area—with more downtown high-rises than I’m expecting. Boise State University is a dominant presence, with its formidable football team (Go Broncos!) playing on distinctive blue turf. There are lots of good eating options here for the road tripper.

I’m ready for something different at lunch and Tango’s Subs and Empanadas certainly delivers on all fronts—originality, taste and affordability. I walk into what looks like an old drive-through and am warmly greeted by the burly owner with a bushy moustache, stationed firmly behind the counter while his wife hustles around the kitchen. It’s an Argentinian joint, so I opt for a couple of empanadas, which come out hot and fast. One is a gaucho—a ground beef, green olive and hard-boiled egg mix—and the other a Mexican-style mole with pulled chicken, peanuts, chocolate and chilies. Add a little green salsa for kick and I’m ready to chow down. But what hits these babies out of the park is the enveloping pocket: flaky pastry that’s fried to produce a crunchy texture to offset the soft insides. Two of these empanadas, for $5, is almost more than I can eat, but when they’re this tasty, I manage to get every crumb down. Unfortunately, there’s no spare room for a dessert empanada—a thick caramel dulce de leche.

Big, flaky empanadas hit the spot at Tango’s. $5 total

Tango’s Subs and Empanadas
701 North Orchard Street, Boise
Monday to Friday 11 am-7 pm, Saturday noon-4 pm. Closed Sunday

How often have you been asked: ‘Would you like that with fries?’ Well, at Boise Fry Company, in the great potato state of Idaho, things are turned on their head. Here, the burgers are the sides, and the focus is squarely on the esteemed spud. Thus, when entering this potato palace, I spurn the burger menu completely and am walked through the many fry options. You pick your potato—say a russet, purple, sweet or Yukon gold—and see what cuts it’s being offered in that day; regular, shoestring, etc. I opt for an unfamiliar variety, a Laura, in a shoestring cut. It has a sweet, nutty flavour and is slightly crisp from being double fried in peanut oil, as are all Boise Fry’s offerings. A nice touch is adding the salt mixes (try the rosemary garlic) and choosing the dips yourself and thus being able to season to your taste. As I leave, I’m tempted to ask for a sack of potatoes to go.

Laurel potatoes in a shoestring cut at Boise Fry Company. Yum

A main course of Laura potatoes in a shoestring cut at Boise Fry Company. Yum

Boise Fry Company
111 South Broadway and 3083 South Bown Way, Boise
Daily 11 am-9 pm

It’s funny sometimes how you’ll go looking for one thing and discover something even better. So it is when I walk into Dawson Taylor Coffee in downtown Boise. The French press pot I order is decent enough though rather pricy at $4.50. While waiting for it to brew, I walk through a doorway into an attached space that turns out to be a separate business: Zeppole Baking Co. I’m pretty fussy about muffins and rarely order them, but I can tell that these, with their thick bottoms wrapped in paper, are dense and moist. So I order a blackberry streusel, a sinfully good $2 treat to go with my coffee. The kalamata ciabatta also catches my eye (I can usually tell baked quality by just looking) among the many fine, cold-fermented breads on display. I’ve just eaten lunch elsewhere, but I notice lots of folks munching on ciabatta-based sandwiches, and they’re only $4.59. A bowl of soup with endless bread is another bargain at $3.69. It all adds up to tasty cuisine at rock-bottom prices, especially for downtown Boise.

Dense, moist blackberry streusel muffin at Zeppole Baking Co. in Boise

Zeppole Baking Co.
217 North 8 Street (downtown Boise), Monday to Friday 7 am-8 pm, Saturday 8 am-8 pm; and 983 East Parkcenter Boulevard, Monday to Saturday 6 am-6 pm, Sunday 8 am-4 pm

It’s a Monday night, so I’m safe from temptation at Bar Gernika. I can go with a Basque-style Solomo sandwich, a lovely marinated pork loin with mounds of red pimientos in a crusty French loaf, along with a side of croquetas (little doughy, deep-fried balls similar to that southern staple, hush puppies) and a pint of nitro-infused stout. I could also order a nice sandwich of Basque chorizo sausage or sliced lamb. But if I want a little tongue, I’ll have to be there on a Saturday. It’s the only day beef tongue is offered, albeit with a good amount of garlic and tomato seasoning. Indeed, it’s slow cooked enough, the bartender assures me, that it falls apart like a pot roast. In any event, it’s all gone in a couple of hours. Bar Gernika is a pub in a narrow, historical building (it was once a Chinese laundry) in downtown Boise, with exposed brick walls and a small open kitchen next to the bar. In fact, grab a Saturday bar seat, and you can watch your tongue being grilled.

Basque-style Solomo sandwich with a side of croquets at Bar Gernika in downtown Boise

Bar Gernika
202 South Capitol Boulevard
Opens Monday to Friday at 11 am and Saturday at 11:30 am, closing around midnight. Closed Sunday

Want to design your own breakfast? *Goldy’s Breakfast Bistro, a cozy little downtown diner that you strangely enter through a heavy purple curtain, let’s you do just that. You can choose your meat, style of eggs, potatoes and bread or any of the above on their own. I actually prefer a complete package, so I go for something I’ve never had before—Andalusian eggs. It’s a revelation, featuring a bowl full of ham, chorizo and peppers in a thick tomato sauce, with two poached eggs on top and a thick ring of asparagus. It’s delicious but a little too rich for me to finish this early in the morning. What puts this place over the top is the offer to take another coffee refill to go. When I say I want to go to an Internet cafe, the waitress says just take the coffee up the block to their Goldy’s Corner, where they offer me yet another free refill. Now, that’s service.

Lovely Andalusian eggs at Goldy’s Breakfast Bistro in Boise

Goldy’s Breakfast Bistro
108 South Capitol Boulevard
Weekdays 6:30 am-2 pm, weekends 7:30 am-2 pm

Heading From Colorado Into Utah

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Tons of Italian meats on this calzone at Carelli's Pizza & Pasta

Lots of Italian meats on this sandwich at Carelli’s Pizza & Pasta

Hungry? I hope you bring company, or at least a healthy appetite, to Carelli’s Pizza & Pasta in Craig, a short drive west of Steamboat Springs on Highway 40 in northwest Colorado. The calzones are enormous, stretching in a couple of instances to two or three feet. A more reasonable monster is the Carelli Calzone, featuring a liquidy furnace of meatballs, sausage, ricotta and mozzarella. I settle for the merely massive Mancinelli sandwich—layers of mortadella, salami, capicola, ham and lettuce—heated in the oven till the provolone cheese melts and the focaccia is nicely toasted. Attacking with a knife and fork, I put a healthy dent in it but have to box the rest for a later road snack, er, meal. The two young women beside me have a more manageable strategy, ordering big, single slices of pizza.

Carelli’s Pizza & Pasta
465 Yampa Avenue, Craig, Colorado
Monday to Saturday 11 am-9 pm

Farther west on Highway 40, Vernal, Utah is the nearest staging point for Dinosaur National Monument, established to protect an historic dinosaur quarry, which can be viewed by guided tour. If you’d like a quick, authentic Mexican meal in town, stop at Tacos El Gordo (“Never trust a skinny cook”). Behind some non-operating gas pumps, El Gordo retains a faded convenience-store feel, with fridges full of sodas and packaged snacks for sale. Soon after placing my order at a little window, two tacos (pollo/chicken and carnita/pork) arrive—hot, crispy, a little greasy and flavourful, with a little bottled hot sauce added from the drink fridge. It’s a good, light lunch in an unpolished eatery for $4, a few bucks more if I’d gone for a burrito or quesadilla.

Cheap, fresh food at Tacos El Gordo in Vernal, Utah

Tacos El Gordo
395 East Main Street, Vernal, Utah
Monday to Saturday opens at 8 am. Closed Sunday

I guess you could say I hit a double bagel in Park City. The place I want to go to, Nature’s Wraps, is closed, so I head next door to Wasatch Bagel & Grill (1300 Snow Creek Drive), where I have a chicken parmigiano sandwich on a fresh, toasted bagel. It’s decent, but the service is distracted, despite the place being mostly empty. The next morning, I drive a fairly long way to reach a different part of Park City, where I have a pretty good egg bagel sandwich (something I rarely order) at Park City Bread & Bagel (3126 Kilby Road), though the pounding soundtrack is annoying at 7:30. I then navigate through construction in a new mall nearby to have a nice coffee at Park City Roaster (1680 Ute Boulevard), though by this point I just want out of town. I know Park City is a big ski resort town (it has a much bigger tourist than resident population), is the principal location for the Sundance Film Festival and hosted some 2002 Winter Olympic events. But I don’t know if Park City has a historic centre. It doesn’t seem to have any centre, just a bunch of new, disparate developments with little character. It certainly helps to have a GPS to find my way around.

Once you’re safely past the hour-long stress of driving the chock-a-block I-15 past Salt Lake City (it helps to tackle it on a Sunday morning), it’s worth slowing down and getting onto a quieter parallel highway. One such road, Highway 89 to the near east, leads into Brigham City, featuring a large, white Mormon temple, stately and well-tended historic buildings and a wide Main Street flanked by enormous overarching sycamores, their leaves still green in late October.

When you see a sign saying, “Gone fishing,” you just figure you’ll come back another time. But Kathie and Bert, owners of Bert’s Cafe in downtown Brigham City want to go fishing full time… in Oregon. After 30-plus years of running a diner Bert’s parents started in 1929, they’re ready to retire and have put the place up for sale. Their own kids don’t want to run it, and Kathie doesn’t blame them, saying it’s a 24/7 business. Here’s hoping the new owners can somehow carry on the tradition, because this is a real old-fashioned diner, where the cutlery comes in a little paper bag, the waitresses chat leisurely with the customers and the food comes out hot and fast. My omelette special has nice chunks of avocado, the home fries are crispy and the butter melts into the steaming pancake. Lunch items include a sirloin sandwich and an open-face pot roast sandwich with gravy. It’s good, old-fashioned comfort food.

Hey, if anybody knows what’s happened to Bert’s since I passed through last fall, let me know.

The good news: Great homestyle breakfast at Bert’s Cafe in Brigham City

The bad news: the owners want to sell.

Bert’s Café
89 South Main Street, Brigham City, Utah
Monday to Saturday 7 am-7 pm, Sunday 7 am-2 pm

It’s hardly a news flash to say interstate highways have helped shut down many restaurants in the small towns they’ve bypassed. But some manage to persist, such as Mollie’s Cafe in tiny Snowville, just off I-84 near the Utah-Idaho border. Located in a century-old building and owned by Mollie for more than 30 years, it’s the kind of run-down-looking place many travellers might hesitate to enter. But once you walk past walls of old ranching photos, sink into a red-cushioned booth and watch heaping plates of eggs and cheese burgers go past, you know you’re in good hands. Indeed, the cook looks over the counter and asks me if I want the onions atop my little bowl of chili grilled (all of $2.15, including tax). After I’ve licked my bowl clean, she wishes me safe travels. It’s not the kind of treatment you normally get in places on the beaten path.

A true, old-fashioned diner, off the interstate in Snowville, Utah

Mollie’s Cafe
15 East Main Street, Snowville, Utah
Daily 6 am-10 pm

Chugging Into Carbondale and Steamboat Springs, Colorado

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Nothing like a dog to draw customers into your Steamboat Springs restaurant

Nothing like a cute puppy to draw customers into your Steamboat Springs restaurant… or read your blog

I’m resuming my road trip through Colorado, hitting a couple of high mountain towns.

After following the tortuous road over Independence Pass (12,100 feet) and down into Aspen, Highway 82 heading west is a smooth, four-lane freeway, complete with high-occupancy vehicle lanes (I’m not sure where all this commuter traffic is heading, though). Beyond the chi chi town of Basalt, I pull into Carbondale. It partly made its early living supplying potatoes to miners in Aspen. The tradition continues, with Carbondale acting as a cheaper bedroom community to the resort. One cool thing, at night, is skies dark enough to see the stars, or the start of a meteorite shower when I’m there.

Looking for some spirited nightlife in this otherwise quiet town? Just stop for an excellent ale or two at Carbondale Beerworks (647 Main Street, Monday to Thursday 4 pm-11 pm, Friday till 1 am and weekends 2 pm-11 pm) especially during one of their boisterous Trivial Pursuits nights, when the cheers, cowbells and clinking of pint glasses make it hard for waitresses to be heard calling out orders for high-end dogs, wings and fries. Once the show’s over, many of the young patrons hop onto their bikes and wobble off into the night. If you want to pick up some distinctive Colorado microbrews to go, drop into Main Street Spirits (“Buy your ale in Carbondale”), where Rosemary lets me fill my own assorted six pack. 389 Main Street. Monday to Thursday 10 am-10 pm, Friday and Satuday 10 am to 11 pm.

Trivial Pursuits night packs them at Carbondale Beerworks

For an early-morning eye opener, be sure to stop at The Blend Coffee Company. They make great coffee, whether it’s the house espresso blend or a nice pour over. This is coffee with rich, complex flavours, primarily from Denver-based roaster Novo. Let’s see: great coffee, cozy atmosphere, friendly, accommodating staff (Greg let me sample the drip brew before I order). Think it warrants a *.

Great pour overs at The Blend Coffee Company in Carbondale

The Blend Coffee Company
1150 Highway 133, Carbondale
Weekdays 6:30 am-5 pm, weekends 7 am-5 pm

*Village Smithy Restaurant (“We reserve the right to serve everyone”) is humming minutes after the 7 am opening. Customers are streaming into the 1904 house and tucking into hearty omelettes, breakfast quesadillas and pancakes or Belgian waffles mounded with fresh fruit. My breakfast is simple but first class, nailing all the details. The eggs are perfectly over easy, the hash browns hot and crispy, the slightly sweet apple-chicken sausages nicely grilled and the two pieces of multi-grain toast (you really don’t need four) covered edge to edge in butter and accompanied by a pot of fresh raspberry jam. The kicker is a delicious, house-made salsa that I dip everything in.

First-class breakfast at Village Smithy Restaurant in Carbondale

Village Smithy Restaurant
26 South 3 Street, Carbondale
Daily 7 am-2 pm

Now, here’s a concept: give customers samples to help them decide what to order. That’s what The Lost Cajun does with its soups. When you sit down in this small Frisco eatery, you’re given three little Dixie cups of gumbo—one a Gulf shrimp and crab in a dark roux and another a spicy chicken and sausage—along with my favourite, a creamy shrimp and lobster bisque with a mild bite. Then, to cover all the bases for you readers, I actually switch gears and order a breaded and fried catfish po boy, a crunchy treat inside a garlic-buttered mini French loaf.

Catfish po boy at The Lost Cajun in Frisco

The Lost Cajun
204 Main Street, Frisco
Sunday to Wednesday 11 am-8 pm, Thursday to Saturday 11 am-9 pm

Steamboat Springs has hot springs, of course, ski hills and all the usual outdoor sports that demand the Colorado emblem that goes with this lifestyle: the Subaru wagon. I swear that in five minutes of sitting on a street corner, I watch 20 Subarus go by. Almost as popular in these parts are half-ton trucks. I’m guessing you can tell who’s a Democratic or Republican supporter simply by what they’re driving. I’ll let you guess who’s who. Most of the town’s restaurants can be found on or just off the main drag, Lincoln Avenue.

The emblem of outdoor, active Colorado: the Subaru wagon

This lovely old brick building is home to Creekside Cafe & Grill

On a long road trip, I’m always looking for something different, especially for breakfast. So when I peruse the menu at *Creekside Cafe & Grill, I’m ready to move right past the usual eggs Benedict with hollandaise atop an English muffin until I see a version with a quarter pound of shredded corned beef. When I hear the corned beef is seasoned, cooked and pulled apart in house, I’m on board. And I must say it’s a delight, with the tender, slightly salty meat nicely balancing the lemony sauce. Creekside also offers a corned beef hash, large enough, the waitress tells me, that many folks take the leftovers home to make a pseudo Reuben. Creekside looks after the small details, making their own breads, biscuits, hamburger buns and gluten-free granola; you can buy a bag of the latter to go. When I say I’m hitting the road right after breakfast, the waitress even offers to refill my coffee in a to-go cup. Nice.

Eggs Benedict on a mountain of corned beef at Creekside Cafe & Grill. Yum.

Creekside Cafe & Grill
131 11 Street, Steamboat Springs
Daily 6 am-2 pm

I don’t get a chance to eat at Winona’s Restaurant & Bakery (I’ve just polished off a big breakfast at Creekside). But judging by the recommendation of two locals and the full house by eight on a Saturday morning, I’d say it’s well worth a breakfast visit. The restaurant is famous for its cinnamon bun, featured in Bon Appetit and Gourmet magazines, and big enough to feed a linebacker. Winona’s also makes highly regarded French toast, Belgian waffles and creative pancakes such as apple streusel, banana granola and chocolate strawberry.

A full house for breakfast at Winona’s Restaurant & Bakery

Winona’s Restaurant & Bakery
617 Lincoln Avenue, Steamboat Springs
Daily 7 am-3 pm

5^th Street Market & Deli is a good destination for a quick, hot pastrami, turkey-bacon or roasted pepper sandwich. My grilled meatloaf sandwich with melted provolone and arugula greens on a rectangular panini hits the spot; it comes with a small pasta salad. At $10, the price is a little steep, though perhaps not by resort standards.

Grilled meatloaf sandwich at 5th Street Market & Deli

5th Street Market & Deli
435 Lincoln Avenue, Steamboat Springs
Monday to Saturday 10 am-6 pm, Sunday 10 am-3 pm

Just up the street, and down the stairs, The Steaming Bean has nice java (including French press) and smoothies. Besides the usual breakfast treats, it also offers toasted bagels, homemade granola and oatmeal with blueberries. 635 Lincoln Avenue. Daily 7 am-6 pm

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