Pull off the road at most major highway intersections in the Western states and you're likely to be faced with these options:
- Truck-stop fare, usually consisting of a greasy chicken-fried steak smothered in who-knows-what and hash browns cooked in enough grease to change the oil on a diesel truck.- Hot dogs and tater logs from a convenience store.
- Franchised restaurants with boring, assembly-line meals.
But if you're heading north into Jackson Hole country, there's a delectable surprise at Alpine Junction, where U.S. 26 and 89 split off - toward Idaho Falls one direction, Jackson the other.
Right after you've crossed the Snake River and turned east toward Hoback Junction and Jackson, there's a small motel/gift shop/restaurant on the north side of the road: The Nordic Inn and Brenthoven's Restaurant.
Now, up in Jackson you'll find such bustling eateries as Bubba's BBQ (crowded, noisy and there's always a line) and the legendary Billy's Burgers, a '50s style hamburger joint adjacent to the Cadillac Grille, plus dozens of other touristy restaurants.
But Brenthoven's is completely the opposite.
Inside, it has the appearance of an intimate "French country" restaurant with a small but diverse menu and an attention-to-detail kitchen. For breakfast and dinner, the kitchen is manned by one person - Brent Johnston, a native of Clinton, Utah, who, at 49, manages to mix two fascinating careers: music and food.
There are pianists who cook. (You know what I mean: There's Dave Brubeck in a hot jazz session and someone will say "Man, he's really cookin'.")
Then there are pianists who cook.
Brent "Brenthoven" Johnston is one pianist who really does cook.
He is as skilled at turning out a tantalizing Cod Parmesan as he is at serving up Gershwin and Cho-pin.
He earned his nickname back in the '60s when he was on the USO circuit with Eugene Jelesnik. In Vietnam, comedian Martha Raye couldn't remember his name and she kept calling him Brenthoven - a cross between Brent and Beethoven. The name stuck and Johnston uses it both as the name of his restaurant and his recording label.
While larger restaurants are concerned with moving huge numbers of hungry diners in and out the door, Johnston's top priorities are freshness and quality. The strawberries in the light-as-a-feather crepes were probably picked directly from the neatly arranged garden plots right behind the restaurant. The chef also grows his own herbs.
Much of Johnston's produce comes from ranches in the region or his father's farm in Clinton.
He is also very particular about the ingredients for his main entrees.
"Icelandic cod is the only kind I use. It's shipped to us from a fish dealer in Buhl, Idaho," he explained as my wife and I were sampling one of his signature spe-cial-ties, the Cod Parmesan. "I won't use Mexican cod. It's too dirty. And Alaskan cod has the wrong texture."
The lamb comes from nearby ranches in Wyoming while the beef and chicken are obtained from suppliers in Jackson. Another house specialty is venison, shipped from New Zealand.
Why go all the way to New Zealand for venison when deer is plentiful right here in the Mountain West?
(In fact, New Zealand is Johnston's own backyard for half of the year. Come winter, Johnston locks up and moves Down Under, where he performs concerts throughout New Zealand and experiments with new recipes until returning to Wyoming in the spring.)
But the venison?
It's a matter of how it's nurtured and processed.
Across the Pacific, the deer are quietly herded into a dark barn a few days before they're butchered. Over here, the animals are literally chased and hunted down - which causes them to get stressed out.
All that revved-up adrenalin gives the meat a heavy, gamier taste.
The venison from New Zealand is mild, succulent and tender.
Johnston feels strongly that food and music go hand in hand.
"If you put out an ugly presentation of food, it's disappointing. It affects people the same way with music. If you perform and you have a good piece of music and a good composition and you know it well and present it well, you can't fail. It's the same way with music and food," he said. "If you have a good product and have selected things that are fresh and right and you've presented them the right way, it goes well."
Johnston sort of drifted into cooking. He has no formal training.
"Years ago, I would play the piano in restaurants and, for part-time work, I'd fill in (in the kitchen). I discovered I had a knack for cooking . . . a talent," he said.
This was about 25 years ago when he was performing in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, area.
"Then, over the years, I would supplement my income between performance tours by cooking."
"I always loved to cook. I think when you get the cooking and music together . . . it's all integrated. It all involves a feeling, a rhythm and texture. You're working with `live' elements and they're both very sacred things to me because they both affect the soul," he said.
As a boy growing up in rural Clinton, he first learned some of the basic points of cooking from his grandmother, Ivy Johnston. One of Brent's most popular dishes is Grandma Ivy's Bread Pudding (see recipe in today's Food Section).
"Grandmother taught me how to cook. She used to put an apron around me and say, `You can do this.' And then she'd show me how to do it.
"We lived next door to her and she was a great lady. It was always a chemistry. You had to have a feel for it. She never measured things - just a pinch of this and a pinch of that. She had a background in nutrition and was one of the instigators of the school lunch program in Utah years ago."
Brent's bread pudding is based on Grandma Ivy's original recipe.
"All I did was improvise the topping. I make a cream cheese topping. Years and years ago, bread pudding was simply a way to use up stale bread and most people would just throw eggs and milk and sugar into it and bake it and make a sticky pudding. Then, over the years, there have been newer `gourmet' puddings. One uses pure white bread with peach schnapps and heavy cream - it's really something. Other chefs dress it up with meringue. But I just do a basic, old-fashioned, country-style bread pudding."
Like many recipes, his own secret formula for Brenthoven's Dressing just evolved. It started out as a pretty basic poppyseed dressing.
"Then, one day, we needed a dressing and I had no poppyseeds - I'm not fond of them anyway - so I thought if I used celery seeds instead, it may work, and it came out like a whole different dressing, so I kept it. Celery seeds also work nice in soups and little embellishments like that."
One of the restaurant's most popular entrees is Chicken Brenthoven, a house specialty that was spotlighted in the August 1992 edition of Ford Times Magazine. It's a grilled, boneless chicken breast topped with Johnston's very own Brenthoven Plum Sauce (a secret blend of Bristol sherry wine, curry and plums).
Both the dressing and the plum sauce are available in take-home bottles from the restaurant and the nearby Nordic Inn gift shop, along with compact discs and cassette tapes of Johnston at the piano.
But his performances at Brent-hoven's Restaurant are relegated to the kitchen. There's no room for a piano in the cozy, beautifully decorated dining room.
Originally, the Nordic Inn's restaurant was conceived as a basic soup-and-sandwich stop and - like the salad dressing - Brent-hoven's Restaurant slowly evolved.
"We first started off doing other things and slowly developed more of a gourmet menu. I call it `comfort food,' because I go with basic things like fresh vegetables, a starch (like wild rice or mashed potatoes and gravy and bread pudding) - kind of like homestyle cooking but on a higher level," Johnston said. "I don't deep-fry anything. And nothing is prepackaged. Everything is made from scratch."
One recent weekend, my wife and I visited Brenthoven's twice while I was covering a couple of theater events in the Jackson. For an early dinner, we made the 45-minute trip from Jackson back to Alpine - and the "combination special" was truly superb. The platter contained a small portion of Johnston's famous Cod Parmesan and a half-order of Chicken Brenthoven, along with fresh vegetables, rice and home-made rolls. For dessert? The bread pudding, of course.
En route back to Utah, we stopped off again for breakfast, and we sampled both the Egg Crepes and Fruit Crepes. The first was filled with scrambled eggs, diced ham and cheddar cheese while the Fruit Crepes contained fresh strawberries in a Windsor sauce and whipped cream. Both entrees included Johnston's own Morning Glory Muffins.
Like many chefs, Johnston is reluctant to part with some of his recipes. And, believe me, the Cod Parmesan itself is worth the four-hour drive from Salt Lake to Alpine (the most scenic and relaxing route, we decided, was past Malad, Idaho, and over through Lava Hot Springs).
Four years ago, the Nordic Inn - which resembles a bed-and-breakfast inn more than a motel - did some major remodeling on the restaurant.
"I didn't want any more tables. The way it is now, I can control it all. In the restaurant business anymore, people get these dreams. They come through here and they'll say `Oh, my gosh, this is my dream! And my wife, she's an incredible cook. She can make great enchiladas!' And they'll go on and on - and you don't want to do this. This is hell. You don't know what you're getting into. This is 24 hours a day.
"So, they'll go out - and there are tons of them all across the country - they'll buy a 40 some-odd-seat restaurant and try to run it. You just can't do that today. Sure, you'll make your payroll and your utilities and your expenses, but you'll go nuts trying to do it all, because you've either got to go into big volume and take a gamble or stay very small and intimate like I have here.
"I can keep track of everything. From that window in the kitchen I can see every table and see what's going on both sides of me and I have complete control. That's a very powerful position to be in."
Johnston also knows most of his clients. When his regular customers call, he knows ahead of time what they'll want and need.
"So, four years ago, we knocked out the wall, but I didn't want to make it any bigger," he said. "I love wood. I wanted to use more wood because my mother is half Norwegian and when you study Norse lore, you discover that to the Norwegians, wood is sacred. They still tell stories with the lines and knots in the wood. So I did the interior all in pine and hand-rubbed it and sanded it four times. Now, with age, it's starting to really turn beautiful."
The hand-woven carpet in the intimate dining room is French, purchased from a lady in Idaho Falls. Johnston's next project will be to change his china.
Despite the hard work involved in operating a restaurant seven days a week for breakfast, lunch and dinner, Johnston enjoys it because he can put his own personal mark on the food and service.
"It's also a great venue for my recordings. I sell more CDs and tapes through the restaurant than when I used to distribute them in stores," he said.
Johnston used to make his recordings at the old Osmond Studio in Orem, but today he does all of his recording at Ron Watkins' studio in Ogden - part of an old three-story house.
"A million years ago, I was Ricky Tanner's musical director. Remember him? I did all of his recordings. He was a boy soprano, but today he's no longer a boy or a soprano. Now he's the father of five and he lives over by Preston, but he was a joy to work with and we did four recordings together."
*****
Additional Information
How to get there
Brenthoven's at the Nordic Inn is open from mid-June through mid-October with breakfast served from 8 until 10:30 a.m. and dinner from 6:30 to 10 p.m. daily. Lunch service is added early in July. The restaurant is located one-half mile east of the junction of U.S. Highways 89 & 26 in Alpine, Wyo. For reservations, call (307) 654-7556. Dinner entrees range from about $10 to $14. The restaurant is wheelchair accessible.
Recipes
GRANDMA IVY'S BREAD PUDDING
Pudding ingredients:
20 slices thick white bread, buttered and cut into cubes
1/2 cup raisins
6 eggs
1 cup sugar
5 cups milk
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
Topping:
16 ounces cream cheese, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Toss bread cubes and raisins in a buttered baking dish (13- by 9- by 2-inches). Beat together eggs, sugar, milk, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Pour over bread cubes. Spread topping over mixture and bake one hour.
Topping: Cream together cream cheese and sugar. Add eggs and beat well.
Makes 12 to 16 servings.
- Each serving contains 457 calories, 21g fat, 57g carb, 378mg sodium, 154mg cholesterol.
MORNING GLORY MUFFINS
2 cups flour
11/4 cups sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups grated carrots
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped nuts
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1 apple, peeled, cored and grated
3 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a large bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Stir in the grated carrots, raisins, nuts, coconut and apple. In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs, oil and vanilla. Stir into the flour mixture just until moistened. Spoon batter into well-greased muffin tins. Bake 20 minutes.
Makes 24 small muffins.
- Each serving contains 216 calories, 12g fat, 25g carb, 308mg sodium, 26mg cholesterol.