Cookout at Yellowstone National Park Lodge Egret Communications
It wasn't too awfully long ago that dining in national parks left much to be desired, with entrees built primarily, and unceremoniously, around chicken, beef and trout. That's not to say a good meal can't be built around these base ingredients. But after a long, sun-filled day hiking Yellowstone National Park's geyser basins or trekking into Garnet Canyon in Grand Teton National Park, a meal that's as stunning as the landscape is a great way to end the day.
Fortunately, today's park chefs are culinary maestros who perform as if they were trying to sate the gourmands of New York City or downtown San Francisco. And along with stretching their creative skills, they're also watching out for the environment.
"We're just trying to be environmentally friendly," says Jim Chapman, the executive chef for Xanterra Parks & Resorts at Yellowstone. "We're trying to consider what the impacts are on the choices of the foods that we put on the menu. We have
Mural room at the Jackson Lake Lodge Grand Teton Lodge Company
several seafood items that we refuse to serve just because of their status as over-fished, or [because] the farming practices are destructive to the environment."
Such social concern, when paired with epicurean wizardry, is generating some sumptuous meals.
In Yellowstone, for instance, dinner at the elegant Lake Hotel might mean elk medallions pan-seared in huckleberry butter and accompanied by a broiled lobster tail with roasted red potatoes and seasonal vegetables, or grilled Angus beef tenderloin drizzled with rosemary cabernet sauce alongside a mound of buttermilk mashed red potatoes. Vegetarians need not worry about piecing together side dishes of vegetables, either, as Chef Chapman offers pomegranate-glazed tofu with summer squash hash and Israeli couscous served with a saffron coconut cream at Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel.
You will need a hearty appetite to order the signature dinner at the Old Faithful Inn – its foundation is a roasted "steamship" round of bison surrounded by peel-and-eat shrimp, baked herb chicken, Caesar salad, a
Come and get it!
bowl of the house soup, roasted red potatoes and seasonal vegetables – followed by bread pudding with vanilla cream sauce.
In Grand Teton National Park, the meals are just as spectacular. Crimson sunsets over the Tetons can be watched from the Mural Room within the Jackson Lake Lodge over appetizers of pan-fried crab cakes or seared Utah ostrich. Follow your choice with either a whole-roasted South Dakota buffalo tenderloin served with a confit of artichokes and fingerling potatoes or line-caught Pacific salmon with roasted tomato risotto, broccoli rabe and blood orange.
Room for dessert? How about a warmed apple galette with huckleberry-swirled French vanilla bean ice cream?
Down the lake at the Peaks Restaurant in the Signal Mountain Lodge, dinners are crafted around many ingredients that are sustainable, organic, free-range or all of the above. The Paradise Valley free-range filet mignon is six ounces of beef resting atop a Dungeness crab cake graced with a spicy Old Bay beurre blanc and joined by seared spinach and fried leaks. Or you might opt for the organic roasted vegetable lasagna or the ginger sesame-crusted organic prawns, which are served with a coconut lemongrass sauce, red chili oil and stir-fried Asian vegetables.
Of course, any of these meals require you to get back out into the parks the next day, both to burn off the calories and to prepare for another feast.
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