By DENNIS HIGMAN
Cooking has been good to Chris Kastner. Starting as a dishwasher at the Sun Valley Inn in 1976, he later became head chef and a working partner at one of the valley's finest restaurants, the Evergreen in Ketchum. Along the way, he met his wife and partner, Rebecca, and in the ensuing years, they raised a family and eventually founded a restaurant of their own, CK's Real Food in Hailey.
"When I first came to Sun Valley, I had no kitchen skills, no goals. I was a ski bum," Chris, now 54, admits.
But after two years of washing dishes, he saw there might be something better to do with his time in the kitchen.
"In those days, the head chefs at Sun Valley were European, but they hadn't been to fancy cooking schools—they'd worked their way up from the bottom as apprentices. If you showed an interest in cooking and were willing to work at it, they'd teach you and move you up the ladder."
So that's exactly what Kastner did. He worked at The Continental, where he learned about cafeteria-style cooking and also supplied the sauces, salads, stews, soups and desserts to Trail Creek, The Ram and the Roundhouse.
"It was an invaluable basic education in cooking," Chris said. "It gave me a foundation in my profession."
In 1979 Kastner followed the head chef he was working for to Elkhorn where he cooked at the Village Café and met Rebecca, a waitress there, also from California. After a short stint at the Agate Beach Hilton in Oregon, they came back to Elkhorn where Chris got his first job as head chef.
"Elkhorn was an exciting a place to work in those days," Rebecca said. "We had entertainers like B.B. King and Jose Feliciano playing in The Saloon; there was a lot of great nightlife going on."
The Kastners, both blond and fit, were married in 1981 and today have two children, a daughter, Simone, 20, and a son, Gavin, 21.
When the Elkhorn Resort fell on hard times, Kastner became a chef for Russ Armstrong at Chez Russell, a fine dining restaurant in Ketchum.
"That was my graduate school in cooking," he said. "Russ was my mentor, a great teacher, definitely a man ahead of his time. I owe him a lot."
In 1984 the Kastners went back to California and helped Armstrong open a restaurant in Corona del Mar, but when Jack Thornton bought the Evergreen and offered Chris a working partnership as head chef, they jumped at the chance.
"Jack was a wine importer and knew fine wine," Chris said. "He also knew good food and had a real sense of style. It was a wonderful opportunity."
Rebecca later went to work there, too, as the sous chef and ran the kitchen during the day. Chris remembers their years at the Evergreen fondly.
"We had a great team. There was nothing like it in town—it was a high-class place. We served what was called California Cuisine, but we were pretty adventurous and experimental too.
"Jack took us on bike tours of France, calling it research, which it was, and he pretty much gave us a free hand at the restaurant to find our own way. Without that experience we never could have been successful with CK's."
But when the Evergreen was razed and the stately trees in front cut down to make way for condominiums, the Kastners were ready to move on.
"We thought things were slowing down in Ketchum, so we took a big risk and used all our retirement money to buy property in Hailey, got a loan, and opened CK's," Chris said.
CK's Real Food, so named because the Kastners serve organic food, support sustainable agriculture and try to buy meat and poultry from local farmers and ranchers, serves "Northwest Regional Cuisine", mixing in food from France, Italy and Asia. They are open seven days a week, including holidays, except for Halloween, and will celebrate their 6th anniversary this year.
CK's exceeded business plan projections right out of the gate, Kastner, who had a hip replaced recently, notes, but this year has been a hard one for the restaurant as it has for other businesses in the valley. "This is more like the struggle we expected to go through in our first year of business," he says. "It's been challenging.
"But in the end, it's all about the food," Kastner emphasizes. "We're convinced that if we keep the quality high and the prices as reasonable as possible, we'll make it and still be able to provide a first class dining experience for our customers. It's hard work, but then we knew that all along."
