Home Ranch Bottoms: The Story Behind Polebridge's Off the Grid Gem up the North Fork

A few miles south of Polebridge, past pavement, past cell service, sits a bar, restaurant and music venue running almost entirely on solar power - and serving some of the best food in the Flathead. In this episode of Side Tracks, Daily Inter Lake reporter Taylor Inman visits Home Ranch Bottoms to talk with owners Flannery and Dan what it takes to run a business at the end of the North Fork Road.

Inside the kitchen, chef Gabby walks Taylor through the Montana Bowl, a vegan farro and lentil dish built from herbs, produce and even stevia sourced from neighbors up the North Fork Road - a reflection of how much the restaurant leans on what the North Fork itself can provide.

Flannery and Dan bought Home Ranch Bottoms on a New Year's Day tip in 2021, betting that music and baking - the two things they already knew - could turn a stalled pandemic year into something worth building. Six years later, that bet has grown into a gathering spot for a community Flannery describes as bound together by remoteness and self-sufficiency: neighbors who trade rhubarb and herbs for meals, touring musicians who stop for multiple nights just to disconnect, and locals who show up because the team knows their names.

Along the way, Flannery shares the property's most infamous chapter - a grizzly bear named Stahr who tore through the building's walls in the 1990s and left claw marks still visible today - and what it means to run a kitchen 90 percent off the grid, where every menu depends on what the North Fork can provide that day. 

This episode is proudly sponsored by Heritage Knife Shop. A speakeasy-inspired knife boutique located in downtown Whitefish, built for people who appreciate true craftsmanship. From culinary knives to hunting and everyday carry blades, every piece is thoughtfully selected with purpose and style. They also teamed up with Whitefish's James Beard nominated Chef Earl Reynolds and bladesmith Corey Dunlap to create “The Earl,” a limited-edition knife crafted with the same intention and artistry Earl brings to the kitchen. Learn more at https://www.heritageknifeshop.com/

Northwest Montana deserves strong news reporting. Your donation helps continue work like this possible. Learn more at dailyinterlake.com/support

Visit DailyInterLake.com to stay up-to-date with the latest breaking news from the Flathead Valley and beyond. Support local journalism and subscribe to us!  Watch this podcast and more on our YouTube Channel. Find us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Got a news tip, want to place an ad, or sponsor this podcast? Contact us!

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

For those brave enough to drive up the North Fork Road in the summertime, Home Ranch Bottoms is waiting for you. Home Ranch Bottoms is a total hidden gem up here, in my opinion. It's a little restaurant bar music venue just a few miles south of Pole Bridge. Might sound silly that I think it's a hidden gem because it is right here on the main drag. Of course, they've got the tourists going to Glacier and Pole Bridge. But I think the food is some of the best in the flathead. It's just so simple and good. We're here today to talk to Flannery and Dan, the owners, and Gabby, the head of their kitchen, just to learn a little bit more about their menu and what makes Home Ranch Bottom so special. All right, I'm here with Gabrielle. She is the head chef here at Home Ranch Bottom. She's got something that she's gonna make for us today. What are we gonna put together?

SPEAKER_01 0:37

We're gonna put together a new bowl, Montana Bowl. Montana bowl. I'm excited. Um, all right, let's jump into it. Yeah. So this bowl came about because we had a lot of locals and that wanted something like fresh on the menu. We don't have that many vegetarian options. So they're like, we need something fresh ingredients-wise, and something that yeah, that is not burgers and fries. So we got some lettuce, and this is the ferro. Yeah, so the ferro in and a lentil-based uh bowl. So we wanted to do uh ferro because it's a little bit hardier, and then uh we wanted to do the lentils because it's very Montana.

SPEAKER_03 1:21

Yeah, definitely. I actually learned that recently that we have uh we grow a lot of lentils here. Is this far from Montana? Yes, or the lintels, excuse me.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Yes, the lentils are from Montana and the fair as well.

SPEAKER_03 1:36

Is this like um, it kind of looks like like a pico de gallo type?

SPEAKER_01 1:40

It's it is kind of like a pico de gallo. It's like a Persian salad. It is the base, it has cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, and a bunch of fresh herbs. Just up the road basically is one of our neighbors that grows all our herbs. So you guys prioritize like local ingredients? As much as we can because we are also in the middle of nowhere. So what we can find that is local is the best.

SPEAKER_03 2:06

Mmm, very good.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

What are the herbs in it? So we have mint and parsley, is like the base of the salad itself. But in addressing, we have mint, tarragon, parsley as well, and tries and to actually sweeten it. The gal that grows the herbs, she grows her own stevia. So we put stevia in as a sweetener. I myself am a vegetarian. I hate when people do like a vegetarian-vegan thing and try to do a spin-off of something that is meaty or whatever. So I'm like, okay, I want to do this completely vegan, and then honey is technically not vegan. So I was like, okay, what should we do? And I don't want to use sugar. So I'm like, oh, we get these stevia leaves from uh our herb supplier, so why not put those? When did Home Ranch Bottoms open? We opened up in 21. What was your thought process when putting the menu together back then? The big thing that we had from the very beginning was Dan wanted his smash burger from St. Louis, and that became the staple of the menu.

SPEAKER_03 3:17

Those Smash Burgers are so good. I tell everybody it's my favorite, like in the area.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

That's great. Our first year was very much like trial and error. We had so much stuff on the menu that we don't have now. We were test running a bunch of stuff, and then after like one month, and then we're like, okay, we need to dial this back and see what worked. 23 is when we got the friars. We didn't have the fryers until then. And that's when we started to do our fried food, and then we introduced all our sauces, our homemade, and then it became this creation of the menu, what it is today.

SPEAKER_03 3:54

Um, do you guys ever have issues with bears?

SPEAKER_01 3:57

No, that is one thing that um Flannery and Dan were very adamant. I mean, Flannery is a part of uh like um Norfolk preservation here. So that was our number one thing is put up a bear fence around their cooking area and our traps to make sure that not any bears don't come in. We do have a history of bear bacon and not when we when they own it, but uh in this establishment there is bear marks for served out there, and there's a whole story. I feel like Planner could tell a lot better than I could about the bacon. But yeah, that's wild. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:34

Well, you've stuck around here at Home Ranch Bottoms. Why?

SPEAKER_01 4:39

I love the community we have here. Like Dan and Plan are basically my family. I love cooking food, but like making food for people is why I do it. And having the locals come up to me and say, hi, how great the food is, really like that.

SPEAKER_03 4:55

I really see this place as like a community gathering uh location. So I can see that for sure.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

It's a real North Fork operation here. First, you know, I'd say some of these artists that, you know, like they only play pretty good, you know, places. So I'm just we're really lucky to get them up here because they love the North Fork or they love Montana. So it's really lucky. So just trying to accommodate for them.

SPEAKER_03 5:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

You know, kind of give something, like make the stage at least back them up pretty decent, you know.

SPEAKER_03 5:24

What do you hear from some of the artists that come up here and play?

SPEAKER_00 5:28

I think everybody likes it.

SPEAKER_03 5:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

I think everyone likes it. I think they're quite surprised their first time up. I mean, you can see my little Alamo setup out here.

SPEAKER_02 5:35

Oh, amazing. Sound engineer ever. That's one thing, like I'm not Mike, but it's that's not true.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

Oh that's not true.

SPEAKER_02 5:42

That a lot of artists that come appreciate playing here because Danny gives them basically a swap.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

My consoles here and those speakers are incredible. Really old, heavy speakers, but they are so sweet. That's the best, is I get to have some of my favorite, like I'm getting to watch some of my favorite artists.

SPEAKER_03 5:59

The live music part is really important to you guys having that here.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 6:03

Uh, could you tell me a little bit about why that is and like how it came to be?

SPEAKER_00 6:08

I think it's just because I always wanted to be somewhere in the music world, you know. So I've I've like I can play a little bit of music, and then I've always worked for bands like as a crew member, as a guitar tech, or as a sound person, and I worked for sound companies, I've had recording studios. So anyway, I just music's my my favorite, and then just playing all the music and being around all that I have and living in all the places. I just have come across all these wonderful people that are also wonderful songwriters, and that's what I'm trying to do here is just kind of get lucky enough to bring some of these amazing people and artists here. Like tonight, Olive Clug. Amazing.

SPEAKER_03 6:50

Yeah, you guys get really good acts up here.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:53

How did you guys end up here? And like how did Home Ranch Bottom start?

SPEAKER_02 6:56

We'd been living in Pulebridge for some time, and in 21, like New Year's Day of 21, we uh found out that it was for sale. And uh this was post a summer of me working at the Pulbridge Ranger station, uh, which was peak COVID times, and my job was basically telling people that Glacier National Park is full, go home and not like down that same road. There's not another way to go back. And Danny um was stunted musically and couldn't tour anymore just because COVID circumstances. So this was an opportunity for us to change things up. It had a small little stage in the yard and a kitchen, and he is a sound engineer and musician, and I baked. So it seemed like an okay opportunity to put those two know-how things together. And then we just called a bunch of friends who were in the industry who knew how to bartend and run a restaurant, and they came and helped us. And that's how we started it. And it was just a much better alternative to telling people Glacier Park is full to giving them Huckleberry margaritas. Thank you for the drinks as well. Can you remind me what this is called? Yeah, this is our rhubarb, gin and tonic. It's a homemade rhubarb simple syrup. It's a Willie's distillery gin, lemon juice, and tonic.

SPEAKER_03 8:22

I think that's really, really good. You guys got the place. Um, was the building already here? Yeah, we really the infrastructure was legit.

SPEAKER_02 8:30

Like we were pretty excited. Just, you know, anybody who has managed properties in the North Fork or has stayed at a forest service cabin or anything, you know, understands the logistical challenges of existing up here because nature is really number one because we're off grid and being here is basically part of the challenge and joy of living here. This place, however, had all the infrastructure laid out uh because it was a former uh drilling uh camp for Senics in the late 70s. So um Tom Ladenberg, who owned it in the late 70s, put in a huge septic system and built all of the buildings. And I'm not gonna give everybody enough credit because there were a lot of people between Tom Ladenberg and us that built the bar and the all the infrastructure, the puckets who live next door still, uh, created the bottoms, which was a tavern, and they built the actual bar. And um, then Sean and Angie created it into a restaurant, which was a barbecue joint, um, probably from 2014 to 18. These are all estimates, and then Heather Matthews bought it and continued the barbecue vibe until Dan and I got here. It was shut down for a few years due to COVID. As far as like infrastructure, it was pretty laid out for us, which was awesome. Um, the improvements we made really sorry, I was gonna give a disclaimer about the bugs.

SPEAKER_03 10:00

Yeah. Go ahead, give the disclaimer, tell everybody. Um well, we're up in the North Fork, right? It's and it's the middle of summer, so there's a few mosquitoes around. Uh so if you see me swatting, that's why. Sorry.

SPEAKER_02 10:13

So infrastructurally, the only things we had to do was really make it more efficient and bring it into the 21st century now that there's solar power technology and battery technology. We've invested, that's where we've mostly invested was into our power source since we're off-grid. So, how off-grid are you right now?

SPEAKER_03 10:28

No, we're about 90%. So, when you guys opened this place up, I mean, like you said, you were already, you know, on the up giving people huckleberry margaritas versus like what you were doing before. But what was your vision for the place?

SPEAKER_02 10:41

It was just what we knew, which was music and baking. And we had been longtime land um owners up here and really invested in the community. So we knew that at least we would have local support, which you know, we didn't know if that was enough to pay the bills, but it would feel good and at least it'd be a place for everybody who lives up here to hang out and commune, and that it could only grow from that basis. It was just always a gathering place for creative endeavors. And so getting this spot was actually a space that we could share it with the public and um and help our friends who were touring across the country have a little stopover, a respite, really, because touring is vigorous, and so we try and book people for multiple nights so that they have a chance to like get off-grid and disconnect in between the grind. So that was really one of our main visions. And then obviously, like you just put butter and sugar and flour together and they will come. So that was kind of the other one that I just knew would work. Yeah. Did you learn how to bake at Pole Bridge or was that? Yeah, yeah. So I own the Mercantile from 2009 to 14 with my former partner, and uh I apprenticed with the original creator of the Huckleberry Bear Claw. So Dan Kaufman was a third-generation baker born in a bakery in northern Idaho. So when I got to the Merc, that was kind of part of the deal, is I apprenticed to carry on the recipes because we couldn't really buy the Merc and not do what they did. Um, so they agreed to train me how to bake.

SPEAKER_03 12:23

Well, you guys have a lot of wonderful pies here, lots of great cookies, and the coffee cake is really great as well. Is there an item that you like to bake the most?

SPEAKER_02 12:31

The pies and making the cookie soft enough to make it into a perfect ice cream sandwich. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 12:38

That's kind of the best thing on the planet. Do you have any like ethos behind baking that is like important to you?

SPEAKER_02 12:44

Any local thing you could mix up with sugar and a thickener to put inside dough. I heard that you guys source your own rhubarb. Yes, yeah, yeah. All the locals trade for um for meals.

SPEAKER_03 13:01

They bring in their big bags and they even chop it. Gabrielle mentioned that there is somebody that you guys get herbs from. So it does just sound like people up the North Fork just bring you guys fresh, fresh veggies and herbs and yeah, town's a long ways away.

SPEAKER_02 13:14

And the beauty is that everybody is so self-sufficient, and that was the whole ethos behind living up here was to not go to town and chat with your neighbors and keep it circular. Yeah, we have some really amazing people up here doing crazy things up at the Canadian border, growing all of our herbs for all of our sauces.

SPEAKER_03 13:31

Yeah, is there any other kind of like local ingredient that you're just like, oh, this is so great that we have this here? If we could mass produce thimbleberries, I would put an order in. Yeah. That's like, oh, the texture, the flavor, so good. What have been some of the challenges with being off-grid?

SPEAKER_02 13:50

Supplies, garbage, cash would be the main when something breaks, you know, that's kind of you either pay a billion dollars for somebody to come up, but you know when you come here, at least this used to be the way that you're you come here and you have to sign up to fix everything because somebody coming up the road is not usually an option, or if it is, it's insanely expensive. So, anyways, you just get to kind of go to YouTube university and learn how to fix things. And now we have internet. When I came here in 2009, we operated off of Qesenet. It was an internet service provider that took about a half a day to send an email, and then Starling came along. So here we are, and we can, you know, look up anything. And so things have changed quite a bit in the last two decades, but it's really it's it's logistics of living versus running a business is a very different experience and just having to have a menu prepared and every all the ingredients on that menu, and then being able to have your team pivot if we run out of something and communicate to everybody that dang it, we ran out of this, but we do have all these other things. Like we just have to remain very dynamic because nothing is constant here, and it's kind of a fun ride that we get to take our customers on because you know, we're not like everywhere else. We really do have to adapt almost on the daily, um, just because something inevitably changes. And it's kind of a fun ride to take everybody on. Like, I don't know, like things change. Yeah. And this is what today looks like. Garbage is a big challenge up here too, just with grizzly bears and stuff. We put in all the one of the other infrastructural improvements we did was um electrifying our garbage storage and our kitchen.

SPEAKER_03 15:54

Yes, I saw the electric fence outside of the kitchen, which is um, I think really cool and old school to me because I've always seen like pictures of like you know, when they built the Sun Road and they were like banging pots and pans to get the or like shooting at bears to get them to go away. Because like they just zero in on spaces like that when you're out here. Yeah. Um opportunity. I know that there's like a history of bears coming around here, and she mentioned that there's also some marks on the like building. What do you what do you know about that? That's a fun story.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

So, star S T A H R was an infamous bear in the 90s who she was a big sow and um grizzly bear, and she just ran these parts, the bottoms specifically. Every bear up here, if you read any of Doug Chadwick's books, I don't know if you've heard of Doug Chadwick, he's a local author, he also owns property in the North Fork, he's kind of one of our local celebrities. Um, he wrote a book called True Grizz, and when you read through that, you catch on real quick that the grizzly bear biologists name grizzly bears based on who property owners. So Star is named after the stars who live just up the road. So star was named after them. Okay, and star uh got into things, and then one night, here at Home Ranch Bottoms, broke through the doors and the walls, got into the store. Oh jeez, ate chocolate bars and motor oil. The walls were splattered in bear poop, and it reeked, reeked of bear poop because of all the motor oil and chocolate that was consumed. Where are the like bear marks on the they're inside? So yeah, we have some pictures on the porch. You'll see the two by fours are exposed, the exterior and interior walls ripped, the insulation gone, two by fours, air snuck in, and there's still bear marks on the floor. That's so cool. Yeah, yeah. And in the in the pictures we have, they were sliding glass doors um that were like the original patio doors to Home Ranch Bottoms, and now when we shut down, they're like heavy wood lock. Tell me about like some of the new things you guys have added around here recently. So new things to our menu. This year we're doing donuts on the 4th of July. Um, and for special events, we're debating whether to do them all the time. So we can't quite commit, but they are delicious. And um, with the seasons, we will do different glazes. So we've had a raspberry lemon glaze and a huckleberry glaze, chocolate maple, of course. So that's a new fun menu addition this year. Since we had friars, it was like, oh, why wouldn't we do that? But we don't open until nine on Saturdays and Sundays, which are the two days that we do breakfast. And we mainly do breakfast just because we have so many people up here from the music. It's it's a nice, like captive audience. Um, but we don't start until nine because the solar doesn't hit our panels until then. And um, we were burning a lot of diesel and just as part of our mission, we really don't want to burn diesel. So rather than having a 7 a.m. breakfast like a sane person would, we're we're dialing back a little bit and just trying to keep in balance with the natural environment, which is you know part of our mission also. And then we are introducing a Montanable, which maybe Gabby told you about. Yeah, yeah, uh she made it for us. Oh, great. Yeah, it was great. I don't know if she told you about the Timeless Seeds, but that's a lentil and grain um company based in eastern Montana. Lentils has always been a thing that I've been hoping to introduce to the menu in this year with just having it be our sixth year and kind of being able to expand a little bit. That was something that we could add to, you know, just what we're trying to do being off-graded. And then we do their faro also. Um, so we have lentils and ferro that are grown here in Montana, and then we gision them up with all the goodies that Gabby put in your bowl.

SPEAKER_03 20:05

It was it was really refreshing. I could imagine like coming off of like a really hot day, like you've been hiking all day, and getting something like that would be really nice, you know.

SPEAKER_02 20:14

You would think that people come out of the backcountry and they're like, I saw your Smash Burger sign when I was heading in, and all I could think about the whole time was getting a smash burger when I got out. So, I mean, it's so crazy. And I think any restaurant business owner will tell you like the hunger for burgers is real and it's wild. Tell us where we're at.

SPEAKER_03 20:33

We're by this lovely little cabin over here.

SPEAKER_02 20:35

Yeah, so um, new this year, we um got to re-adjoin what was formerly called the North Fork Cabins. Um, we are now calling them the home ranch cabins, but it's a property that is adjacent to Home Ranch Bottoms, just south of Home Ranch Bottoms, that was originally a 20-acre lot all together, and it got subdivided in the 2000s um as two different properties. And so we have now brought them back together. So we are now a bar, restaurant, music venue, as well as cabins. You can hang out at your cabin. Can you hear it? And get a little nice show from the stage. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:20

What does it mean to you personally to be part of the North Fork community up here?

SPEAKER_02 21:24

Oh man, that's a loaded question. It means a lot. It means so much. It's such a dynamic community. It's crazy. It's, you know, people driving the Canadian border is 27 miles north of us. And when you drive north, every four to six miles you see little clumps of mailboxes. And I might be overexplaining, but just maybe for our listeners who haven't been to the North Fork, um, there's little clumps every four to six miles, and there's microcommunities within every single one of those clumps of mailboxes. Mail comes on Tuesdays and Fridays. UPS and FedEx deliver as Of today, but I think they're trying to get their contracts revoked because the road is so bad. Um, we've got the national park with a seasonal staff as well as a year-round staff. We have the Glacier Institute that has Big Creek and their seasonal staff. And then in the winter we have a hundred year-round residence, but and then in the summer, when we're open, it can grow to as much as 400 seasonal landowners who come up to their second homes and cabins and whatever. So that is what like our community consists of. But being in this community, whether we agree politically or not, we'll help each other change a tire. We'll pull each other out of a ditch, we'll lend sugar, we'll give each other a ride home. The remoteness and the self-sufficiency makes us a community of interdependence.

SPEAKER_03 22:55

Yeah, well, you know, and it's cool to like show up here in particular and see all of those different groups of people like hanging out together. Yeah. You know, yes.

SPEAKER_02 23:04

And so that that is, I think that's the other beautiful thing about it is it is still a place where music and food bring everybody together and old friends gather, you know, and it's the outside world is not present. It does not exist around a table.

SPEAKER_03 23:24

Yeah, another thing that really strikes me about Home Ranch Bottoms is like you guys have really, really great hospitality. Oh. Um, is that something that is intentional or just yeah, absolutely? Tell me about that.

SPEAKER_02 23:36

Yeah, we just, you know, we are the locals place, which means that we when we bring our team in, our team learns the names of every single local. Um, and it's just very important to us that we can create community immediately, like it already exists, but when we bring in a new person, that they immediately are part of it and understand our community. Definitely hospitality forward and definitely community forward. And we wouldn't have it any other way. We we want to look everybody in the eye and make sure they're having a good day, find out what they did, what they're doing tomorrow, how we can help make their experience here awesome. We are so fortunate. We uh most of our gang has come back and are all returners, and everybody comes back because they love this place, they love the community, they love their job, and it just really shows within the interactions. I mean, even as a bartender having to answer the same question 20 times a day. This gang still answers sincerely and authentically and provides a welcoming, non-judgmental environment. And I just are we're so lucky. Our staff is amazing, and I hope that everybody gets to come meet them while I have the microphone. I'd just like to encourage anyone local or traveling that is reading or watching this to support local businesses because it's tough. And um, this year especially is a really seemingly weird year in the flathead with the airport being closed, cost of goods up. Um and so locally owned businesses seek them out. Yeah, support 'em. Absolutely.