Death Valley Visitors Guide - 11th Edition

options by popular request for the 2018/2019 season. The Bistro also serves a Firehouse Burger and Firehouse Fries. The proceeds from these sales are donated to the local fire department. Steaks and Beer Former Las Vegas chef Eric Scott has been cooking in Tecopa since 2015 and opened his own steak house in a little railroad tie cabin on the Old Spanish Trail Highway in 2016. Scott decided to get right to the point in naming his restaurant and called it simply Steaks and Beer, although the menu does include some vegetarian pasta and salad options, Scott said. The menu is limited but everything on it is crafted with careful attention to detail and infused with Scott’s 20-plus years of experience cooking is some of the most high-pressure restaurants on the Strip. He learned French cuisine at the 4-diamond Andre’s French Restaurant, and is trained in Italian cuisine as well. Scott is passionate about selecting high-quality ingredients, he said, using organic and farm-to-table produce and grass fed beef when he can get them. The indoor part of Steaks and Beer is tiny, with only two tables, but it opens into plenty of outdoor seating, including an unusual patio suspended over a fish pond. As the name implies, Scott serves a variety of beers, including local brews. In Tecopa, Scott said he found freedom from the constraints of corporate cooking. Here, he said, he can actually meet the people he feeds, truly relax on his days off, and cook his menu his way. Tecopa Brewing Company and BBQ Restaurant Westley McNeal first arrived in Tecopa when he was 17. “There was never anywhere to eat here for the longest time,” McNeal, now 36, remembers. These days McNeal and his wife Courtney McNeal, often with their toddler daughter in tow, are running a BBQ restaurant and their own craft brew pub called the Tecopa Brewing Company at the entrance to Delight’s Hot Springs Resort. “It’s a family business,” McNeal says, “we all pull together.” McNeal says he gained experience for running the restaurant by making home brews and experimenting with the original family recipes for the BBQ sauces and rubs they use at the restaurant. The lunch and dinner menus offer traditional BBQ fare. The pub brews its beers on site and offers two stouts, two India pale ales, and a California red ale. The Brewing Company’s best known beer is its War Eagle pale ale, which is now also available on tap at the Crowbar in the nearby town of Shoshone. Death Valley Brewing Company Jon Zellhoefer estimates that the Death Valley Brewing Company has produced over 140 different craft beers since it opened in 2014. He always keeps a pale ale and coffee stout on the menu, he says, but he likes to experiment and is always changing things up. Zellhoefer’s father owned the area known as “downtown Tecopa,” where the Old Spanish Trail Highway meets the Tecopa Hot Springs Road, back when the mines were going full-time here and the town had a robust population. In those days the property housed a somewhat infamous saloon called the Snakepit. That closed down in 1996, Zellhoefer said, and remained vacant for many years. After remodeling a small building on the property (which now houses Steaks and Beer) he and his wife Cheryl Zellhoefer opened the Death Valley Brewing Company in 2014, selling artisan beers brewed on site. They have since moved into the bigger building next door, using both an old restaurant and the old Snakepit for their regular pub and special events. Death Valley Brewing Company also serves homemade root beer and occasionally hosts guest food vendors with offerings such as home made tamales. For each of the proprietors, the restaurant renaissance began when they were drawn to this quiet corner of the desert, small enough to be peaceful, big enough to allow creative freedom in the kitchen and at the brewing stations. In Tecopa, said most of these entrepreneurs, they could escape the pretension and hustle of the city, work alongside family and friends, and feed hungry travelers and happy locals. What could be better than that? NOTE: All of the Tecopa restaurants close in the hot summer months. Most are open October through May on weekends and select weekdays. Tiny Tecopa Restaurant Renaissance 12 Death Valley Vistiors Guide • 11th Edition The Tecopa Brewing Company is a family operation featuring BBQ and locally crafted beer. PHOTO BY ROBIN FLINCHUM CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11