03 Sep Wanderings: A Mountain Town with Heart

It’s a Friday night in Whitefish — Restaurant Week — and I’m dining at Herb & Omni with a table full of writers, musicians, and artists from across the state. We’ve tasted everything from grilled Korean short rib and foie gras pie to chickpea fritters and, believe it or not, zucchini dino nuggets with cashew garden ranch — such unexpected bliss!

Herb & Omni Chef Earl Reynolds, a local-kid-turned-culinary-virtuoso, was recognized this year by the James Beard Foundation as a finalist for Best Chef. When we catch up with him later, he laughs off the praise and instead wants to talk about the forest where he foraged that morning for bright green spruce tips for the crème brûlée.

The 50-mile Going-to-the-Sun Road in nearby Glacier National Park is a mecca for road bikers, even with its steady 6-percent grade climbing to Logan Pass at 6,646 feet.

The ski hill, named Big Mountain in the 1920s by wooly locals who called themselves the Hell-Roaring Ski Club, was renamed Whitefish Mountain in 2007 and tallies upwards of 500,000 skier visits annually.

After dinner, we wander upstairs for a launch party celebrating the 31st issue of the literary journal Whitefish Review, “Seeds.” As we find seats, a young singer croons from the stage about returning to what matters. It’s a full house, with kids and grandparents, hippies and hipsters, workaday folks — a little bit of everyone. The evening’s readers include a renowned author from the next valley, a high schooler who draws and writes and rides horseback to recover from multiple brain surgeries, and a novelist with a new thriller set in Glacier National Park.

Visitors see old and new side-by-side in shops and bars downtown, but what they may not see are the ways in which local residents, businesses and non-profits work in tandem to maintain Whitefish’s defining features and natural surroundings.

Around Whitefish Lake, there are two state parks, paved and singletrack trails, and plenty of lake overlooks for recreationists.

Editor Brian Schott dedicates the issue to Land to Hand, an organization committed to building a strong community food system. In his introduction, Schott says it’s one of the many ways Whitefish comes together, “like trees in a forest,” to alleviate suffering and celebrate joy. What he says about community, we can feel. The people on this stage, and in this room, and downstairs in the restaurant, and up and down every street in this town, are doing what they love and what they can to make a difference and to make life in Whitefish better for everyone.

Transplants and tourists alike still flock to Whitefish for its immediate access to the great outdoors, and beauty remains the area’s greatest draw.

Autumn colors blend brilliantly with burn scars from wildfires that occur regularly near Whitefish and Glacier National Park. Photos courtesy of Explore Whitefish

That’s what makes this place unlike any other, and maybe why it’s held so firmly to its identity. Yes, Whitefish is still a ski town and a lake town — the “Gateway to Glacier.” But despite a massive influx of people and dollars, Whitefish is still also a town grounded in and dedicated to community even as rapid growth changes its socio-economic landscape. Together, this place finds a way to build affordable homes for workers, provide meals to the hungry, preserve land and maintain trails, protect the region’s clean water, and make outdoor recreation accessible to everyone. The volunteer culture, sense of civic responsibility, and environmental ethics shape Whitefish as much as the mountains and lakes that ring it.

Whitefish features a lively, unpretentious mountain-town nightlife anchored downtown on Central Avenue.

This is a place that invites travelers to take less and contribute more simply by patronizing the businesses that give back to the community. In this way, everyone can play a meaningful role in keeping Whitefish special.

Restaurants that offer more than a meal

Whitefish’s elevated culinary scene finds ways to support the broader community from morning till night with such downtown fixtures as Montana Coffee Traders, partnering with Glacier National Park Conservancy, and the locally-sourced but very Frenchy Fleur Bake Shop, supporting the Pride Foundation’s Open to All initiative, which creates fair and inclusive spaces for LGBTQ+ people.

Sweet Peaks Ice Cream is a favorite local gathering spot in addition to serving locally-grown dairy and produce.

Beauty is always a draw in and around Whitefish.

Herb & Omni, with Chef Reynolds at the helm, opened in 2023 to great fanfare. The restaurant is celebrated for stunning seasonal dishes made from locally-sourced and foraged ingredients. It’s also an anchor of the town’s Restaurant Week, which supports Housing Whitefish, a local non-profit dedicated to affordable workforce housing.

Around the corner, the family-owned Buffalo Café has been serving scratch-made comfort dishes, from biscuits and gravy to bison meatloaf, since the late 1970s. Locals and tourists flock to the establishment for three meals a day, and each February, patrons who donate to the North Valley Food Bank’s FEED LOVE campaign can duck the often-long line.

Cocktails at Herb & Omni can be an elevated affair with local spirits from Spotted Bear Spirits, vibrant flavor trips and winning drink names.

Even with abundant tourism year-round thanks to the ski hill and Glacier National Park, Whitefish still maintains its wonderful small-town feel. Photos courtesy of Explore Whitefish

Thirty Eight Whitefish, an open air venue for live music, food trucks, craft cocktails and events, gives back too. In summer, they host Market Wednesdays to showcase local artisans and small businesses and Giving Thursdays to support Whitefish’s abundant non-profit organizations.

Where checking in means giving back

Visitors to Whitefish can hang their hats at one of several establishments with proven conservation and philanthropic bona fides. On the waterfront, the sprawling Lodge at Whitefish Lake donated and manages the 28-acre water-cleansing Viking Creek Wetland Preserve. Trails weave throughout the area, with signs educating visitors about the critical watershed and its avian inhabitants. Volunteers are invited to help collect scientific lake data for the Whitefish Lake Institute.

“I fell in love with Whitefish 30 years ago as a ski bum dishwasher with a literature degree from Dartmouth,” says Brian Schott, founding editor of Whitefish Review. “Beyond the skiing, the arts community and independent spirit of the town attracted me and ultimately gave me the courage to start a literary journal that could not exist without the generous donations of the community, the local foundation, Montana artists and writers who feed the creative spirit, and the encouragement to do something that doesn’t make sense in the traditional world. In Whitefish I have always felt like I have a safety net of sorts. That if I fell, I would be picked up. And if I jumped, people would help me fly.” Photo: Kristen Binder

Much newer on the scene is the luxury boutique Larch House, located in downtown’s historic Railway District. Designed by Seattle’s Olson Kundig architecture firm, sustainability drives the hotel’s design, services, and amenities. Its elegant in-house restaurant, Enga, features fresh ingredients from local farms committed to their own sustainable practices.

Have an experience, leave a footprint

While the simplest way to contribute to the community in Whitefish is by opting in to the Community Support Fund, a voluntary one-percent fee on bills at participating restaurants and hotels, there are other ways to lend a hand and have some fun in the process. Whitefish Legacy Partners, for example, hosts public workdays on the 47-mile non-motorized and multi-use Whitefish Trail, and also trains trail patrollers to hike, bike, or run while monitoring conditions. Other annual fundraisers for the Whitefish Trail include the Hit the Trail Challenge each May and the Whitefish Trail Hootenany in August, a rollicking good time with music and adult beverages.

And for multi-sport go-getters, Dream Adaptive Recreation offers year-round outdoor events including community paddles, group paved path or mountain bike rides, and watersports instruction in support of their mission to enhance the quality of life of individuals with disabilities by providing adaptive outdoor recreational opportunities. More than 200 volunteers are utilized each year to provide ski and snowboard lessons and support paddle, water sport, and mountain biking programs.

If you go…

Dining

Buffalo Café
406.862.2833; buffalocafewhitefish.com

Enga
406.863.1205; larchhouse.com/culinary

Fleur Bake Shop
406.730.8486; fleurbakeshop.com

Herb & Omni
406.862.8150; herbandomni.com

Montana Coffee Traders
406.862.7667; coffeetraders.com

Accommodations

Larch House
406.863.1205; larchhouse.com

Lodge at Whitefish Lake
406.863.4000

Attractions & Events

38 Whitefish
406.897.4163; thirtyeightwhitefish.com

Glacier National Park
406.888.7800; nps.gov/glac

Viking Wetland Preserve
406.862.4327; whitefishlake.org

Whitefish Mountain Resort
406.221.5285; skiwhitefish.com

Non-profit Organizations

Dream Adaptive Recreation
406.885.9539; dreamadaptive.org

Housing Whitefish
406.318.6890; housingwhitefish.org

Land to Hand
406.616.2017; landtohandmt.org

North Valley Food Bank
406.862.5863; northvalleyfoodbank.org

Open to All
Pridefoundation.org

Volunteer to Ski
406.863.2470; cityofwhitefish.gov

Whitefish Community Support Fund
explorewhitefish.org

Whitefish Lake Institute
406.862.4327; whitefishlake.org

Whitefish Legacy Partners
406.862.3880; whitefishlegacy.org

Whitefish Review
406.261.6190; whitefishreview.org