Boxcar Bistro

The Restaurant

Boxcar Bistro opened on Wyoming Street, three blocks east of the Higgins Avenue bridge, and has quietly become the highest-rated fine-dining address in Missoula. The dining room is small - about thirty seats across one long narrow space - and built as a deliberate ode to a classic railroad dining car: leather banquettes against one wall, a long bar with brass rail and railroad memorabilia against the other, low warm lighting, and a single open kitchen pass at the back. The address is residential rather than downtown commercial, which gives the room a quieter, neighbourhood-restaurant feel even on a Saturday night.

The kitchen runs French cooking with a Montana twist. The menu changes with the season but the format is steady: a small section of starters (a classic beef tartare, French onion soup, escargot in herb butter, charcuterie board); five or six mains running from a pan-roasted Montana trout with brown butter, to a duck breast with cherry reduction, to a 14-ounce ribeye with maitre d'hotel butter and pommes anna. Specials rotate weekly and are driven by what the local Bitterroot Valley producers and Western Montana foragers are sending in - morels in May, huckleberries through August, big-game game meat through autumn.

The wine programme is the real surprise. Boxcar runs about 200 references with a stated focus on unique or rare bottles, deep in old-world reds - Cotes du Rhone, Burgundy at a serious level for a town of seventy thousand, a long Loire white section - and a tight but well-chosen New World list. The cocktail bar runs classic French-bistro and pre-Prohibition American with seasonal infusions. The service is old-school and attentive without being formal; the room is romantic without being precious. For a single dinner in Missoula that makes the case that the city can cook seriously, this is the address.