Cast a glance at the Freestone menu in south Kalispell, and you’re likely to catch a glimpse of something a little different for this corner of Montana.
Adjoining the Hilton Garden Inn and styled after an upscale trout lodge with timber beams and paintings of fishing scenes, Freestone leans toward being regionally conventional in that sense. And it has its share of surf-and-turf offerings, like beef ribeye, tenderloin, bison strip loin, crabcakes, snapper, and seared scallops.
But beneath that more classic surface lies a menu swimming with big flavor, starting with dishes like bone marrow topped with mushrooms, pink peppercorns and chimichurri, and bao buns that can be filled with fried chicken and glazed with the sweet and spicy Korean red pepper sauce Gochujang. On the entrée end of things, diners can choose between dishes like curried rack of lamb with a sweet jerk cream sauce, mac and cheese featuring lobster and fried garlic, sweet Thai chili yak burgers, and cashew butter fried snapper. They also have a rotating selection of oysters available via Flathead Fish and Seafood Co.
Jeans Matheros, the executive chef at Freestone, has helmed a few restaurants in the Flathead since arriving during the pandemic with his wife, who is originally from here, and their two children. A visit back to Bigfork and a chance encounter with the owner of Schafer’s Restaurant, who eventually offered Matheros a job, made the trip a segue into a permanent move.
His time at Schafer’s began a stretch in which he landed multiple “Best of Bigfork” awards, including best chef in 2021. Matheros then went on to open his own restaurant, Pesca. After Pesca closed — a development that Matheros said left him “heartbroken,” and led to a hiatus from cooking — he eventually saw that Jess Wrightson was the executive chef at Freestone. Wrightson was someone Matheros said he wanted to work with, so he reached out and came on board at the Hilton Garden Inn, first as their banquet chef, before joining the line at Freestone.
Originally from Los Angeles, Matheros takes a personal interest in a variety of international cooking traditions, including Thai, Nicaraguan, Peruvian, Japanese and Mexican, but he also finds his curiosity drawn toward the instances where some of those traditions meet.
He learned to love Nicaraguan food through his mother and described cherished memories of the family getting together to make nacatamales, a kind of large Nicaraguan tamale that his mother would often fill with pork, potatoes and mint before wrapping them in banana leaves to steam.
The chef said he fell in love with Mexican food, which he’s connected to through his father’s side of the family, years ago while he was working kitchen jobs at a Brazilian restaurant and a sushi restaurant and yet found himself eating more Mexican food than anything else. He grew increasingly passionate about its possibilities, which led to a job at one of award-winning chef, author and restaurateur Rick Bayless’s California restaurants, Red O., which became a professional highlight for Matheros early in his career.
While at Red O, Matheros said he also learned to make a couple of different kinds of ceviche, a dish often associated with Peru, but of which there are many different varieties associated with other countries and regions. During a recent interview, Matheros highlighted the tropical snapper ceviche at Freestone, which is made with red snapper, grilled pineapple and red onions, and marinated in a citrus blend of lime, pineapple and orange juice. Thai bird’s eye chiles get added for some heat, and then the dish is garnished with pickled avocado and cilantro.
He also described the multi-step cooking process that goes into making Freestone’s five-spice baby back ribs. Flavored with a variation of Chinese five spice, a powdered spice blend that typically includes anise, fennel, cinnamon, clove and Szechuan peppercorns, Matheros said the ribs are pressure smoked for flavor, cooked sous vide until tender and juicy, and then finished off on the grill and brushed down with hoisin barbecue sauce and served with sage-brown butter mashed potatoes.
Another dish Matheros singled out is the restaurant’s cedar plank smoked salmon, in which the salmon is rubbed in spices, smoked on a cedar plank, and then finished in the oven with a bourbon-maple glaze. The salmon comes with seasonal vegetables and couscous that’s flavored with apricots, shallots, parsley, orange juice, orange zest and turmeric and garnished with blistered tomatoes.
The following interview excerpts have been edited for length and clarity
FLATHEAD LIVING: Tell me a little about being a chef — what got you into cooking?
JEANS MATHEROS: It’s basically in my blood. My dad was a chef. My mom wasn’t a professional chef, but she was a chef for the family, she always cooked. She was always the one making all the dinners and, you know, cooking for the family. She was a single mother raising five kids. So, she always made it work and I always saw that hard work and dedication with her. She always took a lot of pride and a lot of love going into the kitchen, and I always saw that. I didn’t know I wanted to do that until my senior year in high school. I went out to visit my dad, and my uncle out there was also a chef. He was a chef for Harrah’s Casino. And we got to working together for a bit, just kind of having fun. He (my uncle) wanted to make this cake, and so we were making this cake and he told me, “You know, you have a knack for this. You ever think about cooking?” No, honestly, my entire life has been I’m going to be a doctor, I’m going to be an anesthesiologist. I never really thought about it. I don’t know, something clicked. I went back home to mom, and I told her I wanted to be a chef.
FL: You mentioned that ceviche is maybe not something you necessarily see very often in this state. For people who have never had ceviche before, what makes it a dish that you appreciate so much?
JM: I love it because it’s a fast dish to make, and it’s very raw, and it’s very pungent and with bold flavors in your face. You can take a slab of fish or something that you just catch that day, and then just marinate it in a lot of acidity, and add a little brightness with some fruit, and some crunch with some onions. And I’m a big fan of cilantro, so just that herby flavor. It all marinates together, and it just becomes this wonderful pop of flavor in your mouth. It’s a very different way of eating fish. And that’s what I love about it. It’s just the in-your-face flavors.
FL: Here’s a hypothetical. You’re cooking at home. It’s a cool, fall evening. What do you want to make to really just kind of warm you up and relax. What’s your fall comfort food at home?
JM: Braised short ribs. Braised short ribs are definitely one of my comfort foods. It’s so comforting. You can put them over a bed of mashed potatoes or some pasta or whatever you want to do. It just infuses all that flavor and while it’s cooking it’s filling up the house. You’re getting your mouth watering, you’re waiting for this, and as soon as it hits your plate … it’s very comforting for me. I don’t even have to eat it. Just the smell alone — “Ahh, yes, fall.”