It was nothing more than a big plate of spaghetti with lots of tomato meat sauce dribbling over the sides. Plenty of freshly grated cheese dusted the top like new powder. It was the best ski lunch I had eaten at serious altitude.
That was a few years ago at Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies, when the culinary revolution had stalled out at, say, 5,000 feet. Skiers thought they had landed in gustatory nirvana if they got a cheeseburger that was not too rubbery and a mound of fries that was not too greasy. Decent chocolate-chip cookies or paper-napkin dispensers that were not empty were big plusses.
When skiing was imported to North America from Europe, it seems, many of the sport`s tonier lifestyle elements were left behind. That included the food. Skiing in the Alps often means served multicourse lunches with wine, cheese and cloth napkins.
But a good dinner on a ski mountain above the base village anywhere in the western half of this continent was out of the question. Slopeside eateries were for the lunchtime force-feeding of ravenous skiers before they clumped back outside.
A decade ago Edgar Stern and his Deer Valley Resort, in Utah, came along to turn domestic ski eating as haute as its elevation.
Stern, a New Orleans developer who had taken a considerable liking to the Rocky Mountains, decided that the new ski resort he planned in Utah`s Wasatch Range a mile from Park City would be different in many ways. Near the top of his list was truly good food.
Stern knew about classy accommodations and fine food (he owned Stanford Court Hotel in San Francisco and invented Starwood, Aspen`s ritzy rural residential area), and he saw no reason why a ski resort should have to scrimp in either area.
Other ski resorts noticed that when Deer Valley`s reviews tumbled in, lots of the raves had to do with the food available halfway up the mountain at Silver Lake.
Particular praise was lavished on a small restaurant in a corner of Deer Valley`s Silver Lake Lodge: Cafe Mariposa stayed open to serve memorable dinners to famished skiers. It was trendy, it was good and it was packed.
Rusty culinary wheels began turning at other western ski resorts. A dinner restaurant with top food on a ski slope. Imagine.
Beyond commitment, though, was the problem of wintertime access. Deer Valley had planned for that by building an expensive road up to Silver Lake, where a small village of condominiums and condo hotels also provided a core of well-heeled diners. Midmountain villages connected by road to the bottom are as rare as Kleenex on a cold skiing day. But some ski resorts did have enclosed cable car trams or gondolas that could transport diners up the mountain easily in the evening. Hmmm . . . .
Deer Valley, Utah
Cafe Mariposa is in the Silver Lake Lodge, Deer Mountain`s main midmountain ski facility. It is a warm, woodsy room with a fireplace, windows looking out to the trees and loft dining area.
Clark Norris is Deer Valley`s executive chef. His a la carte menu might include salmon smoked on premises, Chinese-style barbecued pheasant dumplings, a salad of ginger prawns and cilantro pasta, pan-seared sea bass or roast loin of venison with pancetta and a hard cider sauce.
The Mariposa is not Deer Valley`s only good on-mountain dinner restaurant. Glitretind is in the Stein Eriksen Lodge, Silver Lake`s classiest hotel-style place to stay. The restaurant is cozy, vaguely Nordic, a nod to its Norwegian champion skier namesake and Deer Valley`s resident director of skiing, with heavy pine chairs, a stone fireplace and draped windows.
John Trejo is new this season as Glitretind`s chef, bringing considerable credentials from Wolfgang Puck`s Spago in Los Angeles and the Rattlesnake Club in Denver. His moderately priced menu is thoroughly contemporary. Expect things such as Louisiana shrimp with black pepper linguini and New York steak with twice-fried garlic.
Beaver Creek, Colo.
At Beano`s Cabin, things are considerably more upscale than the tough grilled steak, jug wine and campfire songs usually found at the end of a ski resort sleigh ride. For one thing, the steep half-hour sleigh ride required to reach it for dinner is behind a snow tractor, not horses. Enchanting at dusk or on moonlit nights, it stands at 9,500 feet, overlooking craggy peaks and snowy slopes.
Chef Chad Scothorn was schooled at the Culinary Institute of America, and his menu is ”nouvelle American.” Bread bakes in a wood-fired oven. Meat and birds roast in an open kitchen. The six-course dinner includes several entree choices. Dinner, served in early or late seatings, costs a flat $69 ($46 for children under 12).
Steamboat Springs, Colo.
The enclosed Silver Bullet gondola is the way to get to Hazie`s, in the midmountain lodge at Thunderhead. The restaurant is upstairs in a narrow room arranged to provide the best views of twinkling Yampa Valley. Dinner-$43 ($21 for children under 13)-is a four-course affair. Morten Hoj, a Dane who was chef at the Danish embassy in Washington, D.C., usually is in the kitchen. Main courses might be charbroiled shrimp, Florida red snapper baked with white wine and shallots or pheasant in a peach brandy sauce.
Steamboat has a second on-mountain dinner restaurant, Ragnar`s. Since Hoj is also Steamboat`s executive chef, it is hardly surprising that the menu at Ragnar`s leans to Scandinavian tastes.
The rustic-looking restaurant, in the trees near midmountain ski slopes, has been a popular destination for skiers hungry for a civilized sitdown lunch. Last season it opened for dinner, with sleighs, drawn by snow tractors, bringing bring diners from the top of the gondola. A five-course dinner and the lively western entertainment following is $60 ($42 for children under 13). Keystone, Colo.
A tradition of high-altitude dining at this Summit County ski resort is unusual for American ski resorts. For years the Summit House, atop Keystone Mountain at 11,600 feet, has served dinner patrons arriving by gondola such basic fare as fondue. Now, however, the Outpost, a new and nearly as lofty
(11,444 feet) lodge, at the end of another gondola, gives Keystone the highest-elevation, fine-dining restaurant in the country, Alpenglow Stube.
The menu includes carpaccio of red deer with cumin and cilantro, smoky pumpkin soup with chipotle cream, peppered loin of buffalo with bourbon-braised shallots and pinon tart with warm caramel.
Snowmass, Colo.
If you want to be picky, Krabloonik is not high enough up the mountain to qualify for this list. But it is off by itself uphill by road two miles from Snowmass Village, with Mt. Daly and Capitol peak looming. You can ski in for lunch, but not dinner, to this working kennel of sled dogs. Owner Dan MacEachen says he operates the very good restaurant in its log building to help pay for his dogs. That means some fairly high prices for game dishes-nearly $40 for a combination plate of caribou, elk and wild boar. Still, it is an immensely romantic place at night, when good food and honest intentions mingle.
Chef Rudy Smith, another graduate of the Culinary Institute, is a wonder at the preparation of pheasant, quail, boar, caribou, elk and other game.
Squaw Valley, Calif.
Plenty of high-powered diners from the San Francisco area come to the ski mountains ringing Lake Tahoe in California`s snowy Sierra Nevada. Until last year they were hard-pressed to find a dinner restaurant that matched the skiing, the view or even their diminished culinary expectations on any of the mountains. Last season, however, Squaw opened a restaurant at the top of the world`s largest ski tram, a ride that makes a stirring, occasionally dizzying appetizer.
Alexander`s perches at 8,200 feet-2,000 feet higher than the valley floor-on a windswept ledge with nothing to block the view. Before darkness falls completely, an inky-black Lake Tahoe is visible, while the peaks on the opposite shore glow a rosy pink. The restaurant has lots of wood and plenty of windows.
The short menu, devised by Jerry Burawski, Squaw Valley executive chef
(also a Culinary Institute graduate), features littleneck clams casino, steak Diane, chicken with mushrooms and swordfish Provencal.
Good, wholesome food is served at prices that are gentle for a ski mountain restaurant, and there is not a cheeseburger or plate of fries to be found.
