On the third floor of the Deer Valley Club, a restaurant is taking a different approach to Alpine cuisine.
The Alpinist was created by the alpinist himself, chef James Dumas, and his son, Andre, who spent most of their careers working in Park City restaurants.
But the space at Deer Valley Club is especially nostalgic for the pair.
In 1993, James opened Sai Sommet in the same space. He ran that business until 2006. Andre started in the dish pit there at 8.
James later opened another restaurant in 1998 at the Stag Lodge, where Andre worked his way into more front-of-house roles.
“From dish pit, pearl diver, I graduated to getting to do some expo, some bussing, running,” Andre said.
After Sai Sommet, James worked at a few other restaurants in Park City: the then-Goldener Hirsch Restaurant and the Silver Star Cafe before he became the executive chef for High West Distillery. Then, James left the state for a position with Kuleana Rumworks in Hawaii.
Andre had moved on to working on mortgages when James eventually moved back to Park City. When the low interest rate craze during the pandemic slowed, Andre agreed to help James with his father’s catering business.
According to James, the decision to transition from catering to restaurant ownership was Andre’s “one regret,” but his son tells a different story.
“We were in 186 homes a winter out of his home kitchen,” said Andre. “I was like, ‘Look, we’re going to kill each other. We need a real kitchen. Why aren’t we doing a restaurant?’”
When the father-and-son team agreed to start something in late 2022, James drove up to his old home at Deer Valley Club. He said the moment was “kismet.”
“(I) get up here, get this wild hug when I first pulled up here, and then I hear myself say, ‘Go inside. The place is vacant,’” James recalled. “I walk through those doors. The (general manager) looks at me like he’s seen a ghost.”
Sure enough, the restaurant was empty. The same gates James designed for Sai Sommet were still hanging at the entrance.
“I sat in here for like three hours and went downstairs. I said, ‘I’m going to take it for the winter. Temporarily, I’ll take it right now, and then let me work on a plan,’” James said.
The decoration was the same as it was in 1993, so it needed a refresh. For the first year, Andre and James continued the catering work from the restaurant’s kitchen while taking the dining room down to the studs. As the inside came together, they opened for patio service over Fourth of July weekend in 2024 before opening later that year in December.
For the design, James said he wanted a contemporary spin on “retro Swiss alpine,” but he also wanted details of himself, like his love of skiing and travel.
The logo outlines mountains that James has explored, from Utah’s Mount Superior and the Matterhorn to Mount Rishiri in Japan. The “s” in “Alpinist” is shaped like a carving ski run, an Easter egg for those who recognize the old Sai Sommet gates.
Black-and-white vintage posters of lady skiers from the James Bond film “Vieux to a Kill,” reindeer pelts on leather couches and napkins folded like mountain peaks bring the details of the surrounding resort. A black bookshelf is stocked with a collection of James’ personal cookbooks, maps and even miniature puzzles he picked up in Japan.
The menu is also “contemporary Alpine,” changing weekly with James’ interest and seasonal ingredients. His approach draws from what he read in “The Inventions of Nature” by Andrea Wulf, a biography about German explorer Alexander von Humboldt.
“His theory was, at elevation around the world, flora and fauna are the same,” James said. “What changes is the pantry of the nation.”
So while elk, mushrooms, juniper and sage are core ingredients at the Alpinist, the chef experiments with spices and techniques from around the world.
He also found a loophole to add his favorite, Hawaiian fish, on the menu.
“The fish is caught between the first- and the third-highest mountains in the world. When you measure Mauna Kea from the ocean floor, and Haleakalā, they’re higher than Everest and K2, so (the fish) are swimming through those channels,” James said.
A chef’s table experience is another way James gets creative. Built into the kitchen is a booth that seats six to eight people, and each dinner is created on the spot, James said.
“You bring in four bottles of wine, try to get some whites and reds, but you bring them in. I don’t want to know about them,” he said. “No corkage. I’ll look at the bottle. We’ll open it up. I’ll nose it, and I’ll pair the menus based on dietary restrictions.”
Andre said the chef’s table is a tradition they’re continuing from Sai Sommet, and unlike other chefs’ counters around town, it puts diners directly in with the chef.
“There is no barrier between the guests and the kitchen,” Andre said. “If families come in and they’ve got kids with them, we’ll grab the kids and have them come help us plate up dessert at the end of the meal.”
The chef’s table is also how Alpinist gives back to “the nonprofits that make Park City the kind of place worth cooking for.”
Each year, 15 chef’s table experiences, valued at $3,000, are donated to auction for Kimball Art Center, the Literacy Foundation, Park City Foundation, Live Like Sam, Peace House, Nuzzles & Co, Egyptian Theatre and the National Ability Center. Already 13 have raised $65,000 for those organizations this year.
When it comes to creating menus, James said he’s often inspired by the weather, not just in Park City, but around the world.
“We’re always looking at snow and the weather, so if somebody’s really getting pounded, we’ll go to that influence, just to talk about what’s going on in other spots,” James said.
Not only is the menu designed for mountain lovers, but almost everything they do keeps skiers in mind. In the winter, when they’re open for lunch seven days a week, Andre said diners with a reservation can show up anytime during the lunch block from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
“If it’s a powder day, you’re not like, ‘Oh, we got a reservation at 12:15, we got to stop.’ Ski until 1:59 and come in,” he said.
The lunch menu is a $45 three-course skier special, with either a soup or salad, a rotating entree and a dessert.
“That skier special is built with, if you eat at a relatively reasonable pace, you can get through and be ready to go back to snow in 20 minutes from sitting down,” said Andre. “It all comes from when you’re skiing in the Alps, you’re going from chalet to chalet, and each one has its own characteristic and feel. Some you only stay for 20 minutes because that’s all your time allows for, and others you stay until it’s dark.”
Andre said Alpinist is open “when the Deer Valley lifts are spinning,” and plans to open for the winter on the first Saturday of December.
The last day of summer dining — which is 5:30-9 p.m. on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays — is Sept. 27, but Andre said they run catering and private events during the shoulder season. They’ll also host some special events, Andre said, such as a multicourse pop-up dinner with Mack’s Finest Gelato planned for Oct. 3.
The pair will also spend closure time traveling to mountains across the world, like a recent trip to Russia. It’s another way to gain inspiration to bring home to Park City.
“In town there are, I believe, 120 restaurants from the top of Deer Valley up by the Montage all the way out to Pinebrook. Of those 120, as a local, you’ve got 10, maybe 20 places that you’ll go back to on any sort of regular basis,” said Andre. “We want the feeling when you leave to be like, ‘Oh wow, yeah, that was great. I’m definitely coming back.’”
For more, visit alpinistdvc.com.