Crumbs in my 'Stache: A chip off the old Wilson block

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

By Ben Cannon

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-For lunch the other day, I ventured out of my townie comfort zone and headed to the West Bank for something barely familiar to me.
I wouldn’t normally leave town for lunch, but I had been invited out to Wilson to visit Chippy’s Kitchen, a small cabin near the base of Teton Pass.

The cabin itself is haunted by the spirits of Wilson community and merriment pass. Beginning back in the 1980s, it was the original brew pub for Grand Teton Brewing. Brewery founder Charlie Otto, who some call the “Godfather of Wyoming Microbrew,” lived right there on the premises, and Wilson residents and friends from other parts of the valley regularly bonded there over good beer.

On days when the skiing on the Pass was good, people would go to Charlie’s to swap stories and share in the joie de vivre of fine skiing, beer, friends. And food. Although it wasn’t a real restaurant, a few of the more neighborly regulars were known to bring homemade dishes, sometimes Indian food, to feed the beer drinkers.

If you, like me, weren’t there to see it, doesn’t it all sound like one of the coziest little community nooks you can imagine?

Well, the spirit of community undoubtedly remains in the cabin, except nowadays its accompanied by some of the best sandwiches in the valley.
I arrived at Chippy’s late in the afternoon, well past the normal rush lunch hours. But rather than finding the dining room chairs empty, there were a handful of guys who’d just come down from skiing the pass.

One of them, West Bank resident Dustin Handley, a Chippy’s newcomer, echoed a common misunderstanding about the restaurant.

“Dude, I thought this place was just takeout, I had no idea you could eat here,” said Handley, who talks a bit like Spicoli, Sean Penn’s character in the cult 80s movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High. He added that he planned to return often.
I studied the chalkboard menu that listed the sandwiches available for the week before settling on the flank steak. When it arrived, the bun was hot and flaky, the flank steak grilled perfectly and sliced thick, and the extras –melted cheese, caramelized onions and a slathering of horseradish sauce– helped send it deep into the bleachers, to borrow a baseball metaphor. Or rather, since we’re so near the denouement of football season, it went right between the goal posts to win the game in overtime.

When owner Chippy Sherman isn’t busy making great sandwiches, she’s an in-demand caterer preparing for the next event. Sherman said this has been an unusually busy January, with more than a dozen catering jobs booked this month. Most of those clients are probably people who already know Sherman and her friendly staff, and know that they’re going to get terrific food prepared with sincerity and care. I’ve never written about anything being prepared with the word sincerity, but that’s kind of the warm feeling you get when you walk into Chippy’s Kitchen.

That old cabin has seen a lot of local history in its day. The beer-making made a break for the cheaper pastures over in Idaho years ago, but Chippy’s might just be as much about friends and community as anything that came before it. And the sandwiches are excellent. JHW

Photo by Ben Cannon
Owner Chippy Sherman jokes with regular Greg Von Doersten.

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Crumbs in my 'Stache: A chip off the old Wilson block | Planet JH News Article: Restaurants And Dining

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