For more than two decades, The Sawtooth Club has been a place to gather and reconnect with friends. Its warm ambience coupled with its superb location on Main Street in Ketchum make it a no-brainer for locals and visitors alike to meet any day of the week for a tasty meal and a cold drink. I can still remember meeting friends there years ago for drinks and a backgammon game after movies or for a bar bite before going out on the town. So here we are 17 years later, and it would seem that Peter and I keep coming back to the Sawtooth for some reliable and tasty sustenance before going out on the town.
We arrive on a Friday night during slack. And despite the slow end of the season, the Sawtooth is in full swing. All the bar tables are full, so we take one in the center of the room (Peter has a view of the Laker game and I manage to catch a glimpse of a man and a woman dining across from us—the man trying desperately to sneak peeks of the game while still making conversation with his date.)
Despite a pared down bar menu due to slack, we still have plenty of decisions to make. Salads, sandwiches, burgers, fish and chips, and lots of yummy appetizers are there for the snacking. In honor of the recent Jazz Fest in New Orleans (and because we haven’t had wings in ages), we chose the Louisiana Hot Wings ($7.95) and a couple of bottled beers (nothing fancy, just cold bottled beer like the kind god intended, $3 each). For dinner, I chose the Grilled Ahi Sandwich with a lemon-dill tarter sauce, ($9.75) and Peter chose… you guessed it… the “Club Burger” with avocado ($8.95). We are soooo predictable but we know what we like and we don’t pretend to otherwise.
Before you assume that the Sawtooth Club is limited to pub fare, make note that it also has a fabulous dinner menu featured in the upstairs dining room which includes Cedar-Planked Salmon, Idaho-Grown Pork Tenderloin, Chicken Senegalese and Mesquite-Grilled Filet Mignon. Their food rivals any restaurant in town and the dining room is consistently busy.
Our wings arrive in record time (Lakers half time in fact!) and we dive in, dipping the wings in the coveted white sauce. This sauce tasted like Ranch dressing, and while I prefer Bleu cheese with large chunks, it cooled down the heat of the wings just as well. Dinner came shortly thereafter and I think, at least on this particular evening, I made the right choice. My Ahi sandwich was beautifully pink inside and placed on a soft baguette with lettuce and tomato. The lemon-dill tarter sauce was served on the side and I livened it up with a bit more squeezed lemon. This sandwich was delightful. The fish was cooked perfectly and the bread was first-rate. Nice job Sawtooth. Peter’s burger was exclamation free, but yummy, topped with cheddar cheese and avocado and we shared an enormous pile of shoestring fries—the perfect complement to our entrees.
We ordered a few more beers from our waitress, who was attentive, knowledgeable and obliging. We then headed across the street to the Casino to play some pool and enjoy Ketchum slack before the madness ensues.
My hat’s off to the Sawtooth—a Ketchum institution that’s managed to secure its place on Main Street, and just as importantly, in my heart.
