THE WEST
Meet the Culinary Powerhouses Behind Boise’s Best Restaurants
By Maria Rodriguez | July 10, 2025
AUTHOR BIO: With a day job that requires constant travel, Maria Rodriguez is likely a frequenter of your favorite restaurant. She’s reviewed restaurants since 2007 in publications from Barcelona to Bakersfield.
I was one drink in at the hotel bar—vodka, splash of soda, slice of orange, because apparently I’m that person now—when the bartender launched into a monologue about Boise’s dining scene. Hemlock had just opened, Saltbrush was packed since day one, and Tavolàta was already turning away walk-ins. “And there’s more coming,” he said, with the same energy as someone reciting lottery numbers.
It became clear I wasn’t going to have a quiet weekend.
Boise, long the land of fry sauce and Basque croquetas, suddenly feels like it’s entering a new chapter. There’s a momentum here that isn’t just about restaurants opening—it’s about who’s opening them.
So I set out to find the people behind it all. Not the ones shouting the loudest, but the six chefs quietly defining what Boise eats, where it’s headed, and why it matters. Here then are the six most influential chefs in Boise right now and a bit about why they are turning this city into a true culinary destination.
Dan Ansotegui
Ansots
Boise’s culinary heritage runs deep in Basque cooking, and that’s carried on in large part thanks to Dan Ansotegui. He’s spent decades preserving the food traditions of his heritage, and that of Basque pioneers who helped settle this city. Ansotegui began with Basque Market, then with Bar Gernika, and now at Ansots, a sausage shop and pintxo bar that feels like it was lifted straight from San Sebastián and dropped into Old Boise.
At Ansots, you’ll find txorizo sandwiches, croquetas, and plates of piperade. But this isn’t nostalgia—it’s living food culture. He sources locally, tweaks old family recipes, and turns out the kind of flavors that only come from generations of muscle memory. National outlets now namecheck Boise’s Basque food as part of why the city matters. And that’s mostly thanks to Ansotegui.
Rémi Courcenet & Nate Whitley
Terroir
Technically two chefs, but together Rémi Courcenet and Nate Whitley operate as a single force quietly making Boise more sophisticated. Terroir opened as a modest wine bar with snacks, the kind of place you’d expect to find in Sonoma. What emerged was something much bigger: a reservation-only dining room with a tasting menu grounded in seasonal, farm-direct cooking and wines most people here had never heard of, much less sipped.
Whitley trained at some of the country’s top kitchens. Courcenet is the French-born sommelier who matches the pairings with an unpretentious charm. Together they build menus that feel both local and global—beet-cured steelhead with horseradish cream one night, rabbit confit the next. They were named 2025 James Beard semifinalists, which makes them two of the few people in Idaho who know what to do with duck hearts and a bottle of Jura.
Cal Elliott
The Avery Hotel Brasserie | Little Pearl Oyster Bar
If there’s one chef in Boise who could drop into a big-city Michelin kitchen and only improve things, it’s Cal Elliott. He grew up here but left for Brooklyn, where he ran top-flight restaurants like Dressler and Rye. Then, in what now feels like a pivotal moment for Boise’s dining scene, he came home. Elliott and his wife Ashley first opened Little Pearl in 2020 and then the Brasserie inside The Avery Hotel in 2023, bringing with them a New York discipline and a confidence in butter, restraint, and plating.
The menu changes often but always rotates around French technique filtered through the Treasure Valley. Expect dry-aged duck with brandy demi one week, halibut with house-preserved lemon the next. In 2025, the James Beard Foundation noticed—naming Elliott a semifinalist for Best Chef: Mountain Region. He’s not trying to build a scene. He just cooks like he never left Manhattan. The scene followed anyway.
Sarah Kelly
White Rabbit
Sarah Kelly didn’t set out to be the face of Boise’s quiet restaurant renaissance—but that’s what happened. After Bleubird gave the city its first real downtown café with ambition, she opened Petite 4: a cozy, low-lit bistro where the menu changed often but the line for steak frites stayed constant. She had a knack for pairing unfussy French technique with a kind of lived-in Idaho warmth—one that didn’t need to announce itself. In 2020, the Beard Foundation took notice, naming her a semifinalist for Best Chef: Northwest & Pacific.
Then in 2024, she did something few hometown chefs have the nerve for: she closed the place and started fresh. White Rabbit, her newest project, is more refined but just as intimate—part wine bar, part dining room, part continuation of everything she’s learned about feeding Boise without posturing. There’s house-made pasta, seafood‑forward plates, and anchovy butter on the table like it’s always belonged there. The room is small enough that she can touch every dish. She doesn’t need to raise her voice—because in Boise, people are already listening.
Kris Komori
KIN Boise
Kris Komori is the Boise chef people mention first when they want to sound like they know what they’re talking about. He’s the only Idahoan to ever win a James Beard Award—Best Chef: Mountain Region in 2023—and yet somehow, KIN still feels like a local secret, tucked behind a nondescript door across from the Egyptian Theatre.
The dining room is tiny, tasting menu only, and the pacing just slow enough to make you forget you’re downtown. His food is impossibly subtle—cured egg yolk shaved like Parmesan over fermented carrot purée, or scallop crudo with citrus kosho and smoked salt. Komori isn’t a big self promoter—he’s more likely to boost up other Boise chefs—and doesn’t seem remotely interested in chasing the national spotlight. He’s just cooking at a level that makes everyone else here try harder.
Drew Leger
Brickyard
Drew Leger is Boise‑born, BSU‑trained, and has quietly been leading the kitchen at Brickyard since 2011—a tenure that, in this town, makes him practically institutional. After sharpening his knives in Seattle, he came back with a clear-eyed sense of what Boise diners actually wanted: polished, ingredient-driven dishes without the big-city ego. Under his watch, Brickyard has evolved from steakhouse mainstay to something more versatile, more seasonal, and far more personal.
Leger updates the menu with the rhythm of the Idaho harvest—think duck breast with rhubarb gastrique in May, elk loin with huckleberries by August. But he’s not chasing trends. He’s anchoring the scene. Other chefs may get more ink, but many of them started in his kitchen or still come by for advice. If you want to understand the baseline of Boise dining—where it’s been and where it’s heading—Leger’s food is the place to start.
