This edition of Full Belly Files was originally emailed to subscribers on October 21, 2022. To receive Matt Kettmann’s food newsletter in your inbox each Friday, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.
As you may recall from my Palm Springs report of October 2021 , I travel somewhere interesting with a group of close friends every year on a trip that we call KIA, for “Keep It Awesome.” (The late-night origins of the name remain cloudy.)
We’ve done big cities like New York, Chicago, and New Orleans, but recent years have emphasized the outdoors, including trips to Breckenridge, Santa Fe, and Banff. We missed a return visit to New Orleans in 2020 due to the pandemic, but we rejoined forces last year to tackle Palm Springs, which was a short jaunt for this mostly California-based crew.
This year, everyone was prepared for airplanes again, so we picked Bozeman, Montana, which combines the great outdoors with a compelling culinary scene. While we tend to cook in a couple of the nights — which is why the kitchen of our rented pad is always an important consideration — we also like to feast properly without having to lift more than a credit card on the other evenings.
When I first visited Bozeman almost two decades ago (for my second Montana travel story in as many years), the scene was already lifting off, so much that many had taken to calling the town “Boze-Angeles.” That’s only continued since then, and further ramped up during the pandemic’s work-from-anywhere trend, which boosted home prices so much that some are now using the pejorative “Boze-rly Hills” instead.
