This recipe involves old friends, crazy culinary talent, and making lemonade out of lemons.
This fall we learned the news that our neighbor ranch the Home Ranch was closing its doors to the guest ranch business for a while to complete renovations and redefine the ranch for the future. It was shocking news for many of us, and some of our dear friends who have worked there for years found themselves wondering about their future careers.
What you may not know is that their Executive Chef used to work at VVR many moons ago. Chef Jonathon and our Chef Chol were a team to be reckoned with back in the the early years of their careers. In fact, both of these guys are part of the V-Harmony club, as they both met their future wives at the ranch, and Jonathon and Ashley were married out at the Homestead cabin. Eventually both chefs left to further their culinary careers elsewhere. Jonathon went on to be the Executive Chef at two high end country clubs but always felt the pull of the Elk River Valley calling him home. Fast forward years later when Chol and Jonathon are both back in the Elk River Valley, still great friends, and each married and raising a family and heading up the culinary operation at “rival” luxury guest ranches. We use the term “rival” loosely because although on paper we appeared to be competitors, we have been good friends and industry partners.
While we didn’t really have a place for Jonathan to fill given the talent we have in the kitchen with David, Tanner, and Melissa, it also seemed crazy to not take the opportunity to bring Jonathan back on board. With that, we welcome back to our culinary team Chef Jonathan Gillespie. Yes, our kitchen crew is indeed stacked high as we head into 2020, and we are excited about the opportunities that will offer each of our talented chefs to collaborate, share ideas, fine-tune, and improve our culinary offerings. And that’s a recipe we’d like to try out!