Take Me to the River

It’s a cold October morning at the Greenbrier, the grand resort spilling over some 11,000 mountain-valley acres in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Icy fingers of frost trace across the capacious lawns, fog collects in the shadows and lowland spots, and only the most anemic of sunbeams brighten the autumnal-toned peaks of Greenbrier Mountain to the west. The thermometer reads 28 degrees. Time to wade into a frigid stream after trout.

“This is the hardest part for me,” Jim remarks while playfully fighting with his cumbersome, rubberized river gear.“I’ve held up pretty well at 77, but I think my warranty is running out.” Less of a challenge for him was just showing up this morning, as he’s a retired attorney with a house on the Greenbrier property. His son, meanwhile, had a tougher time clearing his calendar. He’s been the executive chef and owner of Asheville, North Carolina’s season-driven, farm-to-table favorite, the Market Place since 2009. And just last year he expanded eastward to open the similarly focused Haymaker restaurant in Uptown Charlotte, and the fresh-casual Billy D’s Fried Chicken at the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro. When not at one of these outposts of locavorism, he’s probably on the interstate driving between them. Add two young children to the mix and you have a harried restaurateur and father for whom a quick fly-fishing outing with the old man is a real treat.

And there is further significance to this outing. Though William wielded pans from California to Wyoming to South Carolina before planting his culinary flag in the Tar Heel State, he’s a proud West Virginia native son and Mountaineer alum. “This is home,” he says, sliding a leg into his ponderous waders. “It’s always good to come back here and spend time with family. Fishing is something my dad and I try to get out and do when we can.” The pair has had rod-and-reel adventures as far away as Montana, but William’s fondest memory is of boyhood when his dad helped him pull his first catch—a catfish—out of the Kanawha River flowing through the state capital and their hometown, Charleston. “Dad actually had it mounted for me,” he adds with a chuckle.

And the Greenbrier, itself, is a homecoming. The resort awarded William a scholarship to help him attend the Culinary Institute of America and he later spent a season toiling in Greenbrier’s renowned culinary apprenticeship program under Certified Master Chef Peter Timmins. You learn skills at culinary school, but you hone them in exacting, high-pressure, high-volume kitchens. The Greenbrier is all that. “Oh, it was like a boot camp where you come out the other side a much stronger chef,” William says of his time serving under a demanding, salty-tongued top toque.

His West Virginia roots also inform his cooking. While the terms “locally sourced,” “seasonal,” and “farm-to-table” are routinely splashed across menus today—William’s included—he internalized these concepts long before they were culinary buzzwords. It’s an approach to food that’s in his blood. Well, half of it anyway. His father is a city boy from Pittsburgh, but his maternal grandfather was a Mountain State coal-miner-turned-farmer.

“They lived off the land back in the holler in a very traditional, old-school Appalachia way,” William says. “They foraged for different ingredients—ginseng, mushrooms, ramps. They grew a large garden with bees for honey and pollinating. They had a cow for milk, a goat for a lawnmower, and chickens. They had a canning cellar where they’d put things up. I remember playing on their farm as a child, running through the fields and splashing in the creek. I remember sitting on their front porch shucking corn and stringing green beans. As a hyper kid, I was sometimes bored. But fast forward to right now and those are all memories that I treasure.”

And fishing. The first flies hit the water at half-past nine. Ott chooses to put into Howard’s Creek where it makes a lazy bend near the Lodge at the Greenbrier Sporting Club. Mist still cloaks the water and a Sycamore sends yellowed leaves circling lazily downward in the stillness. A startled kingfisher rattles off downstream; the air is perfumed by the wild mint trampled earlier on the shoreline.

But the trout aren’t biting yet. Not that William seems to mind. “There’s something very Zen about getting out on the water and being with nature,” he says, throwing a cast, mending his line (flipping the slack upstream), and letting the nymph drift leisurely in the current. Cast, drift, repeat. With his wife visiting her native India and the kids with the grandparents, his cellphone is on should any issues arise. But as for the restaurants? “I told them not to call unless something is burning down,” he says. Forty feet of chilly water might separate father and son, but they’re together in the quietude of the moment.

Jim snags the next rainbow. Ott holds it in the net a moment so Jim can admire his catch. “Mine is definitely bigger than William’s,” he says with playful braggadocio. Ott’s final fishing spot, a quiet stretch near a groomed golf course fairway, is chosen for its sandy bank, allowing easier access for Jim’s cold-stiffened legs. But soon enough, Jim’s knees aren’t the issue so much as the potential to throw his back out from hauling in so many fish. It’s a honey hole, alright. Ott is kept busy releasing the slippery beasts as Jim beams. “Nice job, dad,” William says, finally walking over from the downstream spot where he’s landed a few himself. “Oh, I’m a natural,” Jim says, mugging as usual. “I’ve got the skills. At this point I should be a guide.”

Away from the fire, he assembles a roasted beet and smoked trout salad with green goddess dressing. This descriptor doesn’t begin to cover the mélange of tastes, textures, and colors in the bowl. Alongside brined and hot-smoked trout he created back at the Market Place are clusters of trout caviar—flavor-bursting, briny pearls of orange that Sunburst makes.

There are crisp slices of pinky-white watermelon radish, tangy pickled ramps, and the minerally herbalness of magenta spreen, a form of wild spinach. The roasted veggies get a garnish of marigold petals to try and compete with this artful salad dominated by greens, purples, and pinks.

Amid the reflective afterglow of an excellent meal, the October Hunter’s Moon, two days shy of full, rises over Kate’s Mountain to the east—for a few dramatic moments, the looming orb appears to be suspended by the ridgeline’s treetops. The last waterfowl come wheeling in from the gloaming to splash in for the night. Lengthening shadows draw dark slashes across the uneven bulk of Greenbrier Mountain to the west.