Three Perfect Days: A Trip to Idaho

Maybe it’s the elevation that has me feeling ditzy. I’m from San Diego, and a sea-level-dweller like myself becomes slightly unhinged at 5,750 feet. As I step out of the Sun Valley Lodge I feel as if I’ve wandered into a snow globe. Fat magpies hop along white-dusted branches to my left, while elegant swans laze on the pond in front of me. I tilt my head back, smiling at the sky, and flakes as large as quarters melt into my cheeks.

This is highly designed magic. Sun Valley boomed into existence in central Idaho as a well-executed business plan in 1936. It was the brainchild of a railroad tycoon, a marketing genius, and an Austrian nobleman. Inspired by European chalets, they sought to create America’s first destination ski resort. They succeeded. What was originally a 3,888-acre ranch became an international hot spot. It boasted the world’s first chairlifts and a who’s-who guest list of Hollywood’s Golden Era, photos of whom line the lodge’s hallways today.

“You ready?” Aaron, my friend and this story’s photographer, startles me out of my reverie. We plod toward his truck in search of belly fuel. In the adjacent former mining town of Ketchum, we find Maude’s, a coffee shop and boutique clothing store. After ordering a latte and an avocado toast with poached egg, I position myself for a photo in front of the antique pennants lining the wall. A young man offers to model with me.

We laugh, and when I tell him why we’re here, he lights up. “There’s nowhere else like Sun Valley,” he says. “There’s no lift lines; no one cares what you do for a living. It’s all under the radar.” His face drops. “We’d like to keep it that way.”

He suggests Aaron and I do a meal at The Covey, and I nearly spit coffee on him. The owner is a friend of a friend, and we were introduced over text the day before. “Oh, you know Jesse? Like, that Jesse?” he says, pointing. Sure enough, chef-owner Jesse Sheue sits at a window booth mere feet away. After a quick introduction and a promise to meet that evening, I have to dash for my ski lesson at Dollar Mountain.

There are two serviced mountains in Sun Valley. Dollar is ideal for beginners, and Bald is where experts (including the dozens of Olympians who live here) zig-zag through Douglas firs and take on the longest, steepest single-pitch run in the world. Sun Valley is known for its verticals. In fact, people are often ready to retire by noon, having racked up between 10,000 and 20,000 vertical feet. Green skiers should come prepared to ski like blues, and blue skiers should come to ski like blacks. As a once-every-two-years skier, I’ll be touching none of that.

An athletic woman with blazing blue eyes and blond hair greets me in the lobby of SnowSports School. Her bedazzled name tag reads MP Loewy (the MP, I learn, stands for “Mountain Princess”). We breeze through the magic carpet hill (i.e., the pre-bunny slope) before heading up the Quarter chair for some parallel turn practice. Loewy and I take a half-dozen runs, watching knee-high children race past effortlessly, tethered to their parents by leashes. We never make it farther up the mountain on the Half or Full Dollar chairs, but by the end of the lesson, I’m connecting turns with traverses. “Dollar is great for beginners,” Loewy tells me. “It’s always in the sun.” We agree on one final run, and from the chairlift, I spot a large coyote cutting across the top of upper Dollar. Its bushy brown and gray fur are briefly backlit by the blinding bright mountain before it disappears into a rare patch of shadow.

After returning my gear, I hop on the free Mountain Rides Town Bus, which generally runs from dawn until past midnight. I get to Bald, where I join the lift queue for lunch at The Roundhouse (originally a lift turnaround). Accessible only by gondola or ski, it has been known for its views and fondue since 1939. I’m here to load up on both. I find Aaron at a window seat, and we order a bottle of crisp rosé and a pot of fondue with veggies.

With the wheel of cheese in our bellies providing momentum, we ride the gondola down, ready to explore. Despite Ketchum’s size, its creative footprint is large. There are more than a dozen galleries and multiple theaters for performing arts. I start at The Community Library. Founded in the 1950s by 17 women, the architectural marvel completed a $13.5 million renovation just before the pandemic. Exposed wood runs the length of an exceptional vaulted ceiling in the main room. The centerpiece is a stone fireplace that extends upward to kiss the beams and cascades down into a cozy, Mid-Century Modern seating area. I’m tempted to pluck a book from the shelves and melt into the scene, but the library’s thrift store beckons.

Around the corner and down the block, the Gold Mine lives up to its name. Entire rooms are dedicated to snow gear and equipment, all at superb second-hand rates. A vintage puffer from The North Face tempts me, until I remember that back home it’s 70 degrees and sunny. Back at the resort it’s a steamy 83—at least in the outdoor heated pool, which releases the tension in my skied-out muscles. Post soak, I watch ice-skating families sliding stiff-legged across a frozen pond. The occasional practiced child glides into twirls. A large red sleigh hauled by two 8-foot-tall Clydesdales approaches the inn, and couples and families climb in. They wrap themselves with Pendletons before being whisked off on a ride through the forest. I would join, but Aaron and I have an appointment to keep.

On a side street in downtown Ketchum, The Covey glows like an A-frame candle. The action inside is just as inviting. There's an open kitchen where high flames tickle an earthen oven to the left, a room-length bar to the right, and tables in between—all full. We order what Jesse Sheue calls a grown-up version of mac and cheese. For our greens, we have a salad topped with thin shavings of frozen blended pear that lend an icy sweetness to crumbles of salty feta.

Full and happy, I head out for a solo stroll before bed. The crisp air cooling my happy-flushed face, I wander past The Sawtooth Club, where Hemingway used to imbibe. I consider stopping in. I’m distracted, though, by something behind the building: 600,000 acres of dark sky reserve and a ceaselessly winking night. It looks as if someone pricked thousands of tiny holes in a black piece of paper and fluttered it before the sun.

In anticipation of two hours on the road, we rise early for an adventure. At the Sun Valley Nordic & Snowshoe Center, we meet Nordic director Steve Haim. He straps on his snowshoes while telling me that there are 40 kilometers of trails in the area. “We are Nordic Town, USA,” he says. “Just hosted an Olympic qualifier race!” We opt for a tame scenic route that crosses multiple bridges along Trail Creek. I’m an avid hiker, but I feel like that kid in the oversize shoes and puffy layers in A Christmas Story, moving bulkily behind Haims’s graceful strides. Something rumbles to our left, and suddenly a herd of elk emerges from the trees, crests a hill and marches into the distance. I take the majestic appearance as a farewell gift from the valley. Time to drive to Boise.

The scenery changes from mountains to glittering trees dusted with frozen dew to cityscape. High-rises meet brick warehouses with faded lettering, among which we find our lodging. We stop at the Modern Hotel and Bar, a boutique motel with a clean, quirky aesthetic and killer food and beverages. It's named for a Basque boarding house that the owner’s grandmother ran many years ago in the town of Nampa, about 20 miles west of here.

Curious about the local Basque community, we walk 10 minutes to a corridor known as The Basque Block. In the late 1800s, people moved from the Basque Country of Spain and France to the American West to work as ranchers. Today the largest concentration of Basques outside of their native land resides here. When we turn onto Grove Street, the smell of sizzling onions and garlic hits us like a train. We spot a man working a massive paella pan on the porch of The Basque Market, a specialty grocer that prepares lunch alfresco on Wednesdays and Fridays. Aaron joins the queue, while I head inside to order from a rotating selection of pintxos (small plates). I opt for lightly breaded calamari, a mushroom pinwheel and Manchego with membrillo (quince paste). We wash it down with a couple of glasses of txakoli (a light Basque white wine). We snag a seat next to the floor-to-ceiling shelves stocked with goods from Basque Country and dig in, barely speaking until our plates are clean.

Next, we head to the Basque Museum and Cultural Center, where history unfolds in a maze of photos and stories. My favorite is an exhibit of salvaged aspen cuttings carved with detailed arborglyphs by sheepherders. We then pop into the Anduiza Hotel, a converted 1914 Basque boarding house. The rooms on the upper levels rent as offices. But behind a glass door on the main level a set of stairs leads down to a vast subterranean fronton, a court where people play pelota, a vigorous handball-like sport. The dusty cream walls are covered in dark dots, swarming in density closer to the floor. It's a tally, I realize, left by thousands of leather balls over the course of a century.

Above ground once more, Aaron and I continue exploring downtown Boise. We step into Ward Hooper Gallery and Vintage Swank. The namesake artist’s bold prints hang on the walls alongside his curated collection of vintage goods. These range from colorful Fiestaware sets to letterman jackets. Catty-corner, we discover Freak Alley, the Northwest’s largest street-art gallery. The first painting was done here in 2002. Now the alleyway is a constantly morphing masterpiece of visual arts, a welcome mash-up of styles and themes. Kind of like Boise itself. One of the state capital’s best-kept secrets, in fact, is that it has served as a resettlement city for refugees since 1975. The result? A diverse, culturally rich community.

One standout product of this policy is the refugee-run Sunshine Spice Cafe, a short drive away, on the west side of the Boise River. Yellow hues dominate here. The cookies, cakes, puddings, even lattes are all flavored with (and colored by) saffron. Four young Afghani sisters—Bahar, Khatera, Narges and Homeyra Shams—opened the café after coming to Boise in the early aughts. They were eager to pursue the education they were denied under the Taliban. They had no experience baking, but after finishing school they practiced, combining their professional and creative skills to start the business in December 2019. “We learned while we had our grand opening,” Bahar says. “Not just baking, but making food beautiful.”

The dedication has paid off: Khatera was a James Beard Award semifinalist for outstanding baker in 2022. I grab a saffron cookie and a box of wonderfully aromatic tea, then hoof it back toward the Modern.

Aaron and I arrive just in time for the hotel bar’s daily guest happy hour. The cocktail menu looks like a graphic novel. Each drink has its own movie poster–like page. The Celery and Smoke (a mezcal and tequila concoction freshened with lime) stands out for me. We’re not in need of a big dinner (that paella was no joke), so we order a couple of snacks. There's crispy cauliflower, spiced with dukkah and pepperoncinis alongside a smear of charred baba ganoush, and a salad of local greens perked up with crunchy granola and tangy pickled onions.

Catching a second wind, we layer up and tread back out into the cold. We walk a few blocks to a speakeasy where the bartenders might breathe fire, if you ask them nicely. Press & Pony has two entrances. One is an inconspicuous door in the adjacent french fry–only restaurant. The other a set of double glass doors and a heavy red curtain on West Idaho Street—that lead to a long, narrow bar with space for about 25.

Tchotchkes celebrating the weird, wild and inebriated cover every inch of wall. Behind the bar, signs state the rules of patronage. Rule No. 1: “Be Nice. Boise Nice.” When I ask the bartender, Erik Schweitzer, what that means, his well-twisted handlebar mustache twitches above a smile. “You’re not from Boise, are you?” he says. “We are happy, with genuine hospitality. No one here is angry or in a hurry. I take it for granted, but my friends from New Jersey… it freaks them out.” The cocktail menu sure is nice. The Denim Blazer combines my love of coffee, High West whiskey and drama when it’s set on fire. It’s even nicer the second time I order it.

After last night’s turn at the speakeasy, only the promise of Janjou Pâtisserie can get me out of bed this morning. Aaron drives us to an unassuming strip-mall, where Moshit Mizrachi-Gabbitas laminates layer upon layer of dough to form flaky, perfectly crisped croissants. She calls them her “obsession.” The Israeli pastry chef and her team make 1,200 of them a week, each batch taking two to three days to complete.

“A lot of chefs that come here try to please the American palate,” she says. “I do the opposite—I try to educate it.” Her croissants are a masterclass in baked goods that aren’t too sweet, and Boiseans have proved to be quick studies. They know to get here early or face empty cases. “Someone wrote that I’m the first woman in Idaho ever to be a semifinalist for a James Beard Award,” she says with a half smile. “Not bad for an immigrant.”

Twenty minutes and two croissants apiece later, we’re eye level with bald eagles, California condors, owls and falcons at the World Center for Birds of Prey. The headquarters for an international nonprofit, The Peregrine Fund, this education center and incubator has raised more than 6,000 endangered birds of prey in its 52-year history. It’s currently home to two dozen raptors. These are birds characterized by sharp talons, curved beaks and excellent vision—some born in captivity, others rescued. Staffers stroll the grounds with feathery friends perched on leather glove–clad hands.

One introduces us to Oliver, a Verreaux’s eagle-owl whose wings brush the top of my head as he jumps from wall perch to hand. “If you want to know the health of an environment, look to birds of prey,” the bird’s handler says. "Raptors are at the top of the food chain—the same one we rely on—so if poisons are jumping up to them, you can bet we’re full of toxins too. Those black bait boxes that lure in rodents to consume poisonous pellets kill not only rats but also the hawks and owls that feast on them." I gulp and make a mental note to change my pest control service back home.

As we wind back down the hill toward Boise, still buttered up from our morning pastries, we consider skipping lunch. We’ve made plans, though, to dine at Kibrom’s Ethiopian & Eritrean Cuisine, near Veterans Memorial Park. If only it were walking distance from our hotel… but wait—there are bikes! A whole fleet is available for free at the Modern, so we trade in our motorized wheels for pedal power.

We are quickly rewarded. As soon as we cross the threshold of the restaurant, the familiar warmth of turmeric, berbere and cardamom spices summons my appetite. Husband-and-wife owners Kibrom Milash and Tirhas Hailu started cooking in Ethiopia, where they ran a restaurant in the Shimelba refugee camp after fleeing war in neighboring Eritrea. They were granted asylum in Boise in 2013 and opened the city’s first Ethiopian restaurant, earning a loyal following. Coincidentally, Idaho is one of the world’s top producers of teff. That's the grain used to make injera, the spongy fermented flatbread that serves as plate and utensils in Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisine. I tear a wide strip from my plate and pinch the gomen (seasoned kale and potato stew) and vinegary salad. I savor the fresh flavors and envy the locals for their access to this spot.

Boiseans also benefit from the nearby Snake River Valley wine region and a hopping craft beer scene. Just over the Greenbelt (the city’s 25-mile riverside park) from Kibrom’s, Garden City has the state’s largest concentration of breweries, wineries and cideries per square mile. We cycle by Telaya Wine Co., known for its award-winning expressions of Idaho- and Washington-grown grapes. It's beer we are after today so we park our bikes at Barbarian Brewing. These guys will put anything in a barrel—cheesecake, pistachios, Gushers—but they’re known for sour beers. In place of my afternoon tea, I sip a surprisingly pretty Earl Grey sour topped with dried flowers.

Our ride back to the Modern is crisp but picturesque, the bike path following the Boise River before crossing back into the city. Soon we’re freshening up for a dinner at Kin, a tasting-menu place from yet another James Beard Award–nominated chef, Kris Komori. Every night there’s just one seating, in one room, at one long table. Maître d’ and co-owner Remi McManus greets us at the door. Just behind lie the dining table and the sitting room, a space that doubles as a gallery for rotating artists. I order a Moron (a gin cocktail with fresh carrot and ginger juice) and mingle with the other guests. They're all locals, a surprising number of whom are doctors who moved here for the outdoors.

The menu changes every four to five weeks, spearheaded by one member of the team and then developed in collaboration. Tonight, Matt Chmiel takes the helm with a five-course exploration of his Polish heritage. We start with a bright take on śledzie featuring local sturgeon and fresh dill, followed by a sour rye soup and a beet dough–wrapped mushroom pierogi. It's a good set-up for golonka, a tender pork knuckle accompanied by a healthy helping of roasted cabbage. It’s fine dining unlike any I’ve experienced: young and playful, spirited yet refined. The presentation and execution feel elegant, but the vibe is pure accessibility. “We take what we do very seriously,” Komori tells me, “but we don’t take ourselves seriously.”

After the meal, as our fellow diners settle into their full bellies, McManus kneels down and asks me and Aaron if we can handle one more drink. We follow him through the casual-eats side of Kin (moody and dark, with natural accents and a prize wheel to help the indecisive pick a cocktail) and down a cavernous hallway. Soon we reach a bank of elevators, one of which takes us up, up, up. At the end of a carpeted hallway, a small corporate office has been transformed into Ampersand. This is an invite-only private bar and event space for those in the know. Emptied Champagne bottles, blown corks, half-peeled citrus fruit, and picked-over canapés from a just-dispersed party are overshadowed by the view: floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city, the mountains glowing in the distance. I sigh. Boise is pretty nice.