“Dad, is this a real trout?” a man asks his father sitting across the wooden table. In Nora’s Fish Creek Inn’s 40-year existence, it’s a question a hundred sons have undoubtedly asked a hundred fathers. The trout in question is mounted on a timbered lintel spanning the width of the log cabin; it’s a miniature version of the 20-foot fish-shaped sign greeting visitors from the roof. There are more variations throughout the 100-seat diner. Its shape adorns the mausoleum-size fireplace at the back of the room. “Yeah,” the dad says. The trout is real.
The old man seems to know the place like he was born here. “Is Jackie working today?” he asks a waitress. When he suggests that his son’s girlfriend, sitting at the table in a desert-colored beanie, take a look around, she obliges. She walks studiously past the customers seated at two sprawling, wood-paneled lunch counters in the middle of the restaurant. Past the kitchen’s wide-open doors, where cooks prepare Nora’s famous huevos rancheros and banana bread French toast, both of which earned the restaurant the title of “best breakfast in Jackson Hole” five times and a James Beard award in 2012. When she sits back down, there’s a wide smile on her face.
Nora’s Fish Creek Inn
5600 Highway 22
Wilson, Wyoming