Basque Kitchens and Mining-Town Tables: Eating Through Rural Nevada

Why Basque food belongs on a Nevada itinerary

Basque sheepherders came to northern Nevada in the late nineteenth century, and the boardinghouses they left behind still serve dinner the old way: long tables, shared courses, no menu to study. Elko is the capital of this tradition. Around the Commercial Street and Idaho Street grid you will find houses that pour a carafe of house red, then bring soup, beans, salad, a platter of oxtail or lamb, and finally cheese with preserves. Dinner typically runs in the region of forty to sixty dollars a head, cash-friendly, and portions are generous enough that lunch becomes optional.

Reno holds its own smaller cluster of Basque restaurants, many near the West Second Street corridor within walking distance of the downtown casinos and the Truckee River. Book ahead for Friday and Saturday; these rooms fill with local families as much as visitors. If you are arriving on a late flight into Reno-Tahoe International, staying downtown the first night beats driving east on Interstate 80 in the dark. The meal is the point, not the setting: expect fluorescent light, formica and a room full of noise.

Picon punch, family-style service and what to skip

The drink to order is a picon punch: Amer Picon, grenadine, brandy and lemon, served tall. It is bracing and slightly bitter, and one is usually enough before dinner. Ask for it at the bar rather than the table, and watch how the regulars take it. If you are travelling with children, most houses offer a smaller, gentler menu and no one will mind a quiet table in the corner, though the atmosphere is convivial rather than hushed.

Skip the urge to photograph every course; servers move fast and the shared-platter format means the table is a working surface. Also skip the burgers on Basque menus in favour of the daily specials, which is where the kitchen puts its effort. In Winnemucca, the houses around the Winnemucca Boulevard strip make a sensible dinner stop on the long drive between Reno and Salt Lake City, roughly two and a half hours east of Reno and four hours west of the Utah line.

Mining towns: pasties, saloons and the Comstock

Virginia City on State Route 342, about forty minutes southeast of Reno, was built on the Comstock Lode and still trades heavily on its silver-boom past. The Cornish miners brought pasties, a folded pastry of beef, potato and swede, and you will find them in the town's cafés and bakeries, usually eight to fifteen dollars, wrapped to carry. Eat one on the boardwalk on C Street and you have the town's signature meal for the price of a sandwich. The Bucket of Blood Saloon and the Silver Queen are the obvious historic stops; both are busy by midday in summer.

Goldfield and Tonopah along US-95 carry the same mining story with far fewer visitors. Tonopah's Central Nevada Museum and the surrounding cafés give you a sense of the boom-and-bust arc without the crowds, and the drive from Las Vegas runs about three and a half hours. If you are basing yourself in Las Vegas or North Las Vegas, which is where most of our current hotel interest is concentrated, treat Tonopah as a long day out rather than an overnight, or break the trip with a night in Beatty on the way to Death Valley.

Where to stay to eat well, and when to go

Match your hotel nights to dinner, not the other way round. In Elko, properties along Idaho Street put you within a ten-minute walk of the Basque houses, which matters when the picon punch is in play. In Reno, downtown or the Riverwalk district keeps you near both the Basque rooms and the Truckee River trails. For Virginia City, stay in Reno or Carson City and drive up in the morning, because the town's lodging is small and books out early for summer weekends. Ely, four hours east of Reno on US-50, makes a good overnight if you are crossing the state on the loneliest road.

May through early October is the window for mining-town wandering, with Virginia City at its busiest during summer and uncomfortably cold on winter mornings at 6,200 feet. Elko's Basque houses run year-round and are at their best in autumn, when the Ruby Mountains turn and the town empties of summer traffic. Book Elko and Reno rooms two to three weeks ahead for spring and fall weekends; the small houses simply do not have the capacity for walk-ins on a Saturday.