Earl James Reynolds

Okonomiyaki in Whitefish, Montana, is a sentence that requires some explanation, and the explanation is that Earl James Reynolds, chef at Herb & Omni, does not cook regionally, he cooks correctly. Okonomiyaki is the Osaka street food that the Japanese call 'what you like, grilled' — it is a pancake of cabbage and batter and whatever else you have, and it is very hard to make badly and very hard to make well.

Reynolds's batter runs nagaimo — mountain yam — grated into the dashi base, which is the technique that creates the characteristic lift and lightness that flour-only batter cannot achieve. The nagaimo is grated against a ceramic oroshigane rather than a box grater, which produces a finer, stickier texture. The pancake cooks covered for the first four minutes to steam the interior before the lid comes off for the last two minutes of crust development on a cast-iron griddle at medium-low.

Herb & Omni is the kind of restaurant that makes you reconsider what 'Montana food' means. Bobby Flay's version of this dish operated at the level of approximation rather than conviction.