Grant Achatz’s Alinea Group Lands in Big Sky With a Daring Mountain Pop-Up
The celebrated chef conceives a destination restaurant at Big Sky Resort, where the alpine landscape influences both a refined tasting menu and artful interiors by hospitality studio Fettle
Chef Grant Achatz has spent the past year marking Alinea’s 20th anniversary with an ambitious global tour that celebrates the Chicago institution’s numerous accolades, which include holding three Michelin stars and remaining a fixture on “World’s Best” lists. The festivities kicked off in Brooklyn, where a tasting menu takeover of Alinea alum Chef Greg Baxtrom’s now-shuttered Olmsted sold out immediately. From there, The Alinea Group traveled to Miami, Los Angeles, and Tokyo before arriving in Montana this winter with a pop-up at Big Sky Resort—and a debonair dining room conjured by hospitality design firm Fettle—envisioned as an epicurean’s tribute to the dauntless landscape of its mountainous locale.
M by the Alinea Group does not revisit familiar territory. “It was created specifically for this mountain setting,” Chef Achatz says. “From the beginning, we asked what a restaurant in Big Sky should feel like. The answer was intimacy, warmth, and connection to the land.” M offers that in spades with a tasting menu that responds directly to conditions at elevation. Flavors often flatten in alpine environments, so Achatz and his team built dishes with concentrated broths, deliberate aromatics, and a measured use of smoke. “Those elements align with the rituals of gathering in a mountain environment, but the expression had to change,” he continues.
Rather than mirror the high-octane tempo of a city dining room, Achatz looked to the mountains for guidance on the menu. “There’s a natural quiet here—a sense of expanse—so the meal unfolds with patience,” he says, describing how the experience builds gradually, like gaining elevation on a hike. “Early courses are precise and focused; as the menu progresses, the flavors broaden and become more resonant, warmer, and more enveloping.” That philosophy carries through a seasonal tasting menu and à la carte menus fusing European culinary precision with the elemental character of Montana’s landscape, with highlights including spruce-infused green apple broth topped with toasted pine nut froth, white birch bark smoked trout finished with birch syrup cured trout roe, 14-day-aged Pekin duck, and a dessert of embered ponderosa pine log ice cream with Costa Rican coffee bean oil.
The hospitality design specialists at Fettle, who often imbue boutique hotels, dining rooms, and lounges with a sense of nostalgia, expertly crafted a lounge-like dining room in a moody palette of moss green, stone, rust, and red travertine that captures the landscape’s untamed majesty while avoiding alpine clichés. Nearly all the furnishings and lighting are bespoke. “Our aim was to capture the palette, forms, and texture of the landscape without creating a pastiche of typical mountain aesthetics,” explains Tom Parker, a founder of the firm, who points to the desaturated tones of hand-troweled plaster, custom carpet patterns inspired by the Madison Range’s stratified geology, and the forest-like textures of the banquettes’ bouclé, mohair, and stitched leather. “We wanted guests to have a feeling of the finishes being natural and organic but also not for the restaurant’s aesthetic to be so intense that it distracted from or fought with the very complex culinary experience.”
Fettle balanced that sense of restraint with a handful of eye-catching focal points. The experience begins in a subdued vestibule lined with aged oak paneling and deep green velvet curtains, where a chandelier by Bocci emanates a soft glow overhead. From there, guests step into the main room and confront the central feature: a burled oak bar capped in luminous red travertine, backed by an expansive wall of aged brass. “It was very important for us that guests immediately felt they were in the heart of the space,” Parker says. “Centering the entry on the bar was a key element of this.”
Artwork naturally assumes a starring role, injecting texture and narrative throughout the dining rooms. The collection pairs contemporary and historic works that draw from alpine exploration, topography, and the Madison Range, with sundry materials such as wood, textiles, woven paper, oil painting, and archival photography referencing mineral mapping and the long history of expeditions around Lone Peak. A reclaimed oak relief by Nardine Abraham traces the rocky terrain, while a woven paper collage by Los Angeles studio Visual Contrast layers an 1814 Lewis and Clark expedition map with a contemporary photograph of the peak. Historic images also make an appearance, including Auguste-Rosalie Bisson’s 1861 image of climbers on Mont Blanc.
“The goal was to create something that could only exist here, where the landscape becomes part of the experience rather than a backdrop to it,” Chef Achatz says. That expansive outlook will undoubtedly travel onward when The Alinea Group’s anniversary tour reaches its final stop in Las Vegas this April at the Bellagio.