Page 108 - Flathead Living // Spring 2015

Waitstaff member Jared Zeuge refills a glass of wine for a patron dining at McGarry’s.
though it were their own home, the soft interior glow illuminated through the restau- rant’s tall glass windows, which cast a lam- bent, inviting glow onto Wisconsin Avenue.
The mood they’ve cultivated is a commix- ture of the peregrinations that marked their early careers and the roots they’ve laid down in Whitefish – a fusion of the diversity of flavors inherent to the travel experience and the comfort of living at a measured pace in a small town that offers both the culture and the calm.
Indeed, the Nogals themselves person- ify the same complementary strains of hos- pitality that make the restaurant a success, Sandy’s conviviality and her hand-picked stable of friendly waitstaff, and Steve’s gruff but not discourteous deftness at dishing out a textured suite of revolving menu items.
The Nogals have been working alongside one another for 25 years, having worked in the hospitality industry since they were teen- agers. Sandy worked in her father’s saloon, while Steve, a self-taught preservationist, cut his chops at his father’s hotel in Skokie, Illinois before striking out on a culinary
odyssey that spanned some 60,000 miles. In 1989, they took over the inn keeping duties at the award-winning Inn at Langley on Whidbey Island, where the dynamic duo ran the show until their departure in 2003.
With the help of their friends and real-es- tate partners Carol and Richard Atkinson, whose late chocolate Lab Haley served as the restaurant’s longtime mascot, they opened the restaurant and named it in honor of Steve’s grandfather, James Thomas McGarry, and his grandmother, Dorothy, whose pic- tures hang in black-and-white relief on the restaurant’s walls.
“My grandfather is probably the most sig- nificant person in my life that I’ve ever met,” Steve said. “He taught me life lessons more than anyone else.”
From the beginning, the couple divided their responsibilities as they always have – Steve running the kitchen with character- istic brusque efficiency and innovation, and Sandy inviting guests through the doors as though they were attending a dinner party, escorting diners to their table and putting them instantly at ease.
106 FLATHEAD LIVING | SPRING 2015