We’ve been on the road more or less for the last 9 days, visiting Jess in Missoula and Jake, Kaitlyn, and grandson Brantley in Livingston. Our primary mission was to spend time playing hard with Brantley; two-year olds have a great handle on the world – they’re mostly content with life, mobile enough to explore everything, inquisitive as hell, and for the most part happy as can be, even with the simplest things in life, including good food.
We also hit several of our favorite eateries back home in Montana and Wyoming (and even discovered a new winner in a very likely place in Amarillo), including Top Hat in downtown Missoula. Their ginger pork lettuce wraps, above and to the right, are probably the best I’ve ever had outside our own kitchen, and Jess and I both think their Italian pork sausage saute over spaghetti squash with a house-made cashew lemon herb ricotta (below) is outrageous.Somehow I missed my wife’s pickled avocado topped house-ground burger, but it was incredible.
In Livingston, most of our favorite places were closed due to COVID-19 fears (there’s not a mandatory closure in Montana as of today), though we did enjoy a few beers with Jake at the Katabatic Brewing Company downtown – try their newly released Walking Stick Wit when you’re in, and grab some Mexican food from next door. We chatted up their owner one afternoon, and my wife thinks their house-made cream soda is the best soft drink she’s ever tasted.
The Rib and Chop House has locations all over Montana and Wyoming, including a fairly new one in Laramie where I sampled their eponymous pork chop below – what a great meal to ease the day’s road burn.
And finally, after a bit of research, and due to a quirk in our travel schedule, we happened to be near Amarillo one morning around breakfast time and had a killer meal at Girasol out on the West side (actually on the site of a farm we used to bird hunt decades ago as I grew up about a mile from there). Their New Mexico inspired Benedict over cheddar jalapeño biscuits and topped with candied jalapeno bacon was incredible, as was my wife’s green chile huevos.
