What’ll it be on this cold winter’s night way out on the rugged range of Big Sky country? The pizza? Or the 8-course tasting menu — opening with a playful fish stick amuse-bouche, followed by a pagelong pageantry of small plates including scallop & saffron, wagyu & caviar, venison & maillard, salmon & kohlrabi, and so on … before closing with a pair of flirty desserts called quince & sunchoke and chocolate & smoke?
Arriving in the dark less than 10 minutes ago at the snow-swirled gates of the green o — a new luxury hideaway tucked in the woods at one of western Montana’s most storied guest and cattle ranches — it can take an extra moment for this weighty decision to fully thaw. Especially if you’ve just flown in from tepid Los Angeles.
Two quick flights and one parallel universe ago, I was stuck in L.A. gridlock on a 76-degree late December day — then crammed inside LAX’s notorious Terminal 6 with throngs of dour folks in T-shirts and pandemic masks.
Now, suddenly, I’m in boot-crunching, breath-viewing, pine-surrounding realdeal winter, way out in a sweeping valley about 30
