With Le Rêve, a Tiny Wyoming Town Gets Fine Dining With Big Ambition

By Mei Chen
6:25 a.m. ET, June 18, 2026

AUTHOR BIO: Mei Chen has worked for nearly a dozen start-ups in as many years, taking her to several West Coast cities. While she’s sure her current day job is permanent, she also has her eye on Carmel.

There are oysters at Le Rêve, along with cassoulet, wagyu tartare, and escargot. There’s French five-onion soup and a cocktail list that sounds straight out of a Manhattan brasserie. And while this is a place that would surely do well on the Upper East Side, this is Sheridan, a town of just shy of 20,000 people in northern Wyoming.

Le Rêve, set inside Sheridan’s historic Cady Building, is now getting national attention for the ambitious cooking by Zoilan Ruiz, a former Bay Area chef with three decades experience in kitchens. With a national James Beard Awards nod last year and headlines far beyond Wyoming, Le Rêve has created a destination restaurant far beyond the scene in Jackson Hole.

Ruiz

Le Rêve comes from restaurateurs Christer and Gina Johansson, who have been steadily investing in downtown Sheridan, including The Warehouse Gastropub. At Le Rêve, executive chef Zoilan Ruiz leads a kitchen that uses French technique without making the restaurant feel sealed off from where it is.

The menu moves between raw bar, bistro, and mountain-town mainstay. There’s ahi tuna Niçoise, Cornish game hen, filet with truffle potato purée, and a Wyoming bison ribeye. Local sourcing shows up where it belongs, not as a lecture but as part of how the restaurant thinks about the plate.

Chef Zoilan Ruiz, Le Reve Restaurant Sheridan Wyoming

Managing the bar is Amanda Merchant, a local who brought 17 years of restaurant experience. “It’s like a dream come true for myself,” Merchant told The Sheridan Press. “It’s a great team, and it’s just so fun coming to work every day and feeling proud of what you’re doing.”

Chef Zoilan Ruiz Le Reve Restaurant Sheridan Wyoming Dessert

That’s why the attention feels earned. Le Rêve isn’t trying to imitate a restaurant from somewhere else. It’s making a more expansive argument for what dinner in Sheridan, or any small town anywhere, can be.