Good food in the Good Times Valley

The North Platte Valley has often been known as the "Good Times Valley". From ice fishing derbies and snow golf tournaments in the winter to microbrew festivals and street dances in the summer, there's no shortage of fun events.

Along with those good times is also good food. 

For five days next week, the North Platte Valley will be the "Good Food Valley". A total of 12 eateries from Saratoga, Encampment and Riverside will be participating in the North Platte Valley Restaurant Week as they prepare for the upcoming summer. This is the inaugural year of the event, but how did it come about?

"I just had a good number of conversations with folks in the Valley about the sheer number of good restaurants in this Valley," said Danny Burau, co-owner of Firewater Public House in Saratoga. "This was three years ago that the idea kind of sparked for me. It was just discussing how much good food there is here and people don't really realize that until they're in the Valley and spending time."

For Danny, who moved to the Valley from Colorado, the idea of putting together a restaurant week appeared to be a simple task.

"It just felt like it should be a relatively easy thing to put together the eateries in this Valley and make a statement, just this organized statement, out to other municipalities," Danny said. "There was a bit of resistance born of confusion about what a restaurant week was. Coming from Denver, where restaurant week was a big thing and hundreds of restaurants participated every year, I just had the perception 'Oh, people are going to know what a restaurant week is so if we pitch this as an idea everybody will be excited'."

Once Burau got past the initial confusion as to what a restaurant week was and how it worked, he said a number of local eateries were eager to sign on. The businesses involved range from fine-dining and sit-down options to grab-and-go locations to coffee shops and breweries. McCall Burau, Danny's wife and co-owner of Firewater Public House, designed a simple but effective website (goodfoodvalley.com) which lists all the participating restaurants and includes directions to each location, information on the business and any special menu items specifically for the event. The website will remain up year round and can be used as a resource for locals and visitors as a "one-stop-shop" of Good Food Valley restaurants.

"Looking at a big city, like Denver, I always took that opportunity to go to a place I didn't know. I knew the food at the restaurants I really liked but here we could get a smattering of things pretty cheaply at a restaurant we don't know. So that's how we always took advantage of it," said Danny. "This is, in fact, a great showing of the community of businesses working together to do a thing. Restaurants have had a tough couple years, this is the right time to be doing something like this and a show to the community of look ... all of these businesses in the Valley are working together to do a good thing."

According to Danny, the purpose of the Good Food Valley restaurant week is two-fold. The first, and perhaps primary goal, is to showcase the participating eateries to potential new customers from out of the area. The second, but equally important goal, is for local residents to either try something new or become an ambassador for the eateries they know and love.

"The end game to me is that people come over the mountain from Laramie or from Cheyenne or down from Casper and they eat at three or four or five places over a three day period, spend a couple nights here. That's the dream," Danny said. "So, people outside the community can take advantage of what we're doing but people inside the community can see this group band together in the way that we, kind of behind the scenes, did the past couple years."

The Good Food Valley North Platte Valley Restaurant Week will run from Wednesday, April 18 to Sunday, April 22.

"I do think that it is a great opportunity for people in the Valley to get out and try one of their favorites, that's maybe trying new dishes, or get out and try something that they haven't tried before," said Danny. "I want the public to know that we want people to visit and try these places but we really do want locals to come out and support these businesses, too."