Jeremy Engebretson was dining at Gill’s restaurant, Scotty’s Table, that night and shifted nervously from foot to foot.
Armed with little but desire, famous chef Thomas Keller as his idol, and a growing stack of culinary textbooks and food and wine magazines, Engebretson spoke in no uncertain terms.
That included the offer to work in the Scotty’s Table kitchen without pay for four months.
In those first months, the popular Missoula chef put Engebretson to work chopping vegetables, making vinaigrettes, and learning the hierarchy of jobs in a commercial kitchen.
He quickly graduated to sauces, and Gill so was impressed by his work ethic, he soon offered him a small wage and more responsibility.
Jeremy Engebretson grew up in eastern Montana, and spent summers clearing tables in his great-aunt’s tiny Glendive cafe. He learned hard work early on, and easily realized the connection between work and dreams.
A computer programmer for the University of Montana by the age of 18, he had approached the university in much the same way that he approached Gill - by extending a hand and asking for a chance.
If it seems unlikely that Engebretson should beg for a chance to perform menial kitchen duties, it makes perfect sense to him. For all the crisscrossing strings of database code laid out on a computer screen, he could never shake the thought of working with food.
The day he walked into Scotty’s Table, Engebretson was a virtual clean slate.
After working for Gill in an internship without pay - one he nearly dropped on bended knee to land - he pulled a repeat performance just two years later, begged for a chance to singlehandedly run a kitchen, and landed the job of his dreams.
Now, after hours spent shoehorned into commercial kitchens, after years digesting recipes and all manner of books, after working alongside the likes of noted chefs Paul Myers, Bob Marshall and Gill, he is a young chef sitting at the helm of the Ranch Club’s 10-table restaurant on Mullan Road west of Missoula.
John and Colleen Powers purchased the Ranch Club golf course and restaurant 16 months ago. In preparation for a new dining concept, the couple hired a head chef and selected Engebretson as sous chef. Mere months into fashioning new menus, their new chef left the Ranch Club in the middle of golf season - and Engebretson got back down on bended knee.
“If you were to look at me on paper,” said Engebretson of his brief culinary career, “I’m not that impressive.”
But his pleas for a shot as head chef were convincing enough that the Powers’ agreed to let him prove his chops.
“My self-motivation is a very strong trait,” he said. “So proving myself was something I knew I would stop at nothing to do.”
According to Engebretson, those first months were a baptism by fire - a time when proving his chops as a kitchen manager coincided with cutting his teeth as a new chef. More than just a tall order, the peak of Montana’s hectic duffer season meant plating 60 entrees a night, five nights a week, from the day he took charge.
“Doing sauces in your own kitchen is one thing,” he said. “Executing food on a production scale was all new to me.”
Engebretson is still grateful to have a small restaurant in which to serve food while continuing to grow as a chef, because it gives him time to construct sound menus, and continue to grow his skills.
One year after becoming Ranch Club’s head chef, his dinner menu boasts solid small-plate appetizers like Kobe beef sliders on homemade brioche buns, accompanied by creamy Gruyere sauce, and served with hand-cut french fries, sauteed shrimp scampi with roasted walnut relish, and sashimi grade Ahi tuna marinated in Nama Shoyu soy, cilantro and sesame.
If there’s room, entrees at Ranch Club are just as solid.
Steak folk, nary a diner could dislike the hand-cut ribeye smothered in a classic Diane sauce so exquisitely executed, you can almost see yourself at Sardi’s in New York City, circa 1960, waving toward Frank Sinatra at the next table.
Cognac, shallots and butter have never been better paddling pals.
And then there are the homemade pastas Engebretson makes daily.
Cascades of paperadelle ribbons hug Andouille sausage, chicken and shrimp in his New Orleans-inspired House Red, while homemade black pepper fettuccine props caramelized onions, roasted pine nuts, lemon and pesto in his House White.
Engebretson is quick to admit that he is still in his infancy as a chef. Yet, several of his dishes are (at the least) reminiscent of those prepared by a chef of considerable experience and standing.
He’s in no hurry, though. Having a lot to learn is all part of the fun, he insists, and developing his own culinary style rests heavily on the curriculum he alone designs.
That curriculum seems always to include regular food trips to cities that feature top chefs and exceptional cuisine.
“Dream cuisine,” he calls it.
So crazy in love with food is the surprisingly rail-thin chef, he constructs entire travel itineraries around food.
He flew to New York a year ago just to dine in Gordon Ramsay’s The London, Mario Batali’s Babbo and mad food scientist Wylie Dufresne’s WD-50.
On the West Coast, he delighted in meals at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, and begged for a table at Napa Valley’s long-booked French Laundry - the mothership of his idol, Thomas Keller.
“I couldn’t get into French Laundry, though, so I went to Bouchon in Las Vegas instead,” said Engebretson.
Still eager to meet his idol, and to witness a Keller galley firsthand, he requested a tour of Bouchon’s kitchen and got it.
He soon discovered Keller doesn’t often make it to Vegas. But even without the legendary chef in residence, Engebretson said it only took an instant for him to turn into a wide-eyed kid in a candy store.
“It was amazing - it’s huge,” he smiled. “They do about $45,000 in revenue daily there.”
In true Keller style, Engebretson loves making just about anything he can from scratch in his kitchen, like the tomato chutney he uses in his shortrib braise and the brioche for his Kobe sliders.
“I know it’s not something I would have the luxury to do in a larger restaurant,” he said. But the luxury to create unique elemental components for individual dishes is something he savors.
What Engebretson lacks in experience, he more than makes up for in passion, drive and intelligence.
Armed with a University of Montana business degree, he one day hopes to have his own restaurant.
“Creating new things and getting to the bleeding edge of cooking is exciting, but you can’t show people cool food if you aren’t making any money,” he said.
For now though, Engebretson is as focused on perfecting brown butter emulsions, as he is on continuing to break bread with family over simple food.
At the end of the day, it’s about good, simple food, not chemical wow, he said.
At its core, he said, food should be about enjoyment.
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