When she was a young girl, Nikki Dupre spent hours making mud pies in the woods and serving them to her family and friends, even when they didn't want them.
"I've always been in the food world; growing up, my family cooked big dinners and that translated to many other areas of my life," she says.
She now goes by Chef Nikki Dupre, the executive chef of Feast Raw Bar & Bistro in Bozeman, Montana.
"For Christmas every year, we would choose another country's cuisine to cook, and somehow I always ended up in charge of the whole operation," she says. "I would go in with little to no knowledge of how to prepare French, or Spanish, or Chinese food, and it required a lot of creativity and curiosity that I still carry with me today."
During her freshman year at Montana State University in Bozeman, she often found herself in the dorm basement cooking meals for her friends. "They still make fun of me for the 'mustard spaghetti' I made for dinner one night," she laughs. "Because I didn't know the difference between a tablespoon and a teaspoon, I ended up using too much mustard in the meatballs. My friends were kind enough to eat it, even if they still tease me about it today."
Halfway through the year, she decided she would rather go to culinary school, and the following year she started at Le Courdon Bleu in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Upon graduation, she returned to Bozeman, working at multiple local restaurants, including Rainbow Ranch in Big Sky, Montana, which is where she first met Steve Kuntz.
"We hired Nikki to be a line cook, and on her first day, I was prepared to be doing both my job and showing her the ropes," Kuntz says. "I showed her the menu, turned around to talk to someone else, and by the time I looked back over, she had already started packing up the equipment we needed and was hauling it to the catering site. I was like, I'm going to have to find some other ways to keep myself busy, clearly there's no need for my guidance here."
Kuntz opened Feast with his then-partner Caroline Doern in 2015, and reached out to Dupre to see if she would like to take on some hours in the kitchen. She started as a line cook a few days a week in 2019 and gradually made her way up to executive chef in 2020.
Kuntz knew Dupre was the right person for the job. "She was perfectly placed to step right into where we were, and then continue elevating it as the executive chef," he said. "She's a tastemaker. She has this ability to look at a situation and parse out the details, making the most effective plan possible. She has shaped the kitchen into what it is today."
When the Covid-19 pandemic struck just a few months into her new role, the entire restaurant had to pivot.
"Nikki was quick to say, 'Okay, this is the new reality, how are we going to make this work?'" Kuntz says. "I credit her with helping us get through that year."
Working with a reduced staff, Feast began to offer takeout, something they had never done before. "We weren't sure if people were going to be interested in our dishes in takeout form, but it turned out to be very popular," Dupre says. "Business never really slowed down, and as we gradually opened the restaurant back up, we just kept getting busier."
This consistent success and longevity seems to be a theme at Feast. This year, the restaurant is celebrating its ten-year anniversary, which is a rarity in Bozeman, especially for establishments that aren't located downtown.
"When we opened our doors, we weren't certain what our clientele was going to look like, since most tourists gravitate towards Main Street," Kuntz says. But the locals came in droves, turning Feast into a popular neighborhood joint, with some customers visiting multiple times a week. Then, as word spread, it started to become a destination.
“I'll talk to people who met somebody at an airport on the other side of the country, and when they found out they were visiting Bozeman said, 'Oh, you have to go to Feast!'" says Kuntz. "The support we've gotten from the community is really special."
When it comes to Feast's employees, many people have been on the team for years, another rarity in the restaurant industry.
"We've built a healthy workplace where people want to be," says Dupre. "There are a lot of employees who have brought friends and family to work here. People leave, and then and come back saying they missed it."
The ethos of Feast is respect and kindness, which can be difficult in an industry full of egos and toxic cultural norms. "The Hollywood portrayal of lots of yelling, insulting, and throwing pans has become a stereotype, but it is definitely a real thing that I have seen with my own eyes," says Dupre.
"From the get-go, it felt important to do our part to change that culture," says Kuntz. "Restaurants are notoriously tough places to work, and that's true for us as well, but we have a core focus on respect between our employees and also between our staff and our guests. Our goal is to give the best possible guest experience, and the best way we can do that is by supporting each other and creating a team-based environment where we work together, not against each other. And what has resulted from this mindset is a really amazing team."
"The whole staff at Feast is welcoming and kind to each other," says Dupre. "And not everyone is from the food industry. We bring in people from a variety of backgrounds, which I think lends to our culture. It's about good, kind people. There are also many days when the kitchen is staffed entirely by women, which was not the case when I was starting out. I can trust the team to do the physical cooking, which allows me to focus on management, planning, and creating new dishes."
Dupre credits her sous chef, Natalie Daddario, as being a key part in this process. "She and I are the ones doing all the menu planning and day-to-day operations together," she says.
Daddario also began cultivating a love for cooking at a young age, helping her grandmother and father with dinner and dessert on a regular basis. Instead of attending a traditional high school, she obtained an education in the culinary arts at a career and technical academy. She started at Feast in 2022, working her way up to become a sous and pastry chef. "She's the one you should thank for sautéing your fish on a Friday night," Dupre says with a grin.
If there's one thing Feast does especially well, it's seafood. "When we opened, we wanted to fill a niche," says Kuntz. "Seafood is a cuisine that isn't as readily available in Bozeman, so we decided to make that a main focus."
All of Feast's seafood is sustainably farmed, sourced through small companies in Montana who have outreach to smaller farms and co-ops. It was the first restaurant in Montana to use critically-lauded Island Creek Oysters, which provides oysters from small farms all over the east coast. "Some of the oysters we've sourced are from the farm owned by my mom’s physical therapist in Maine," says Dupre. "There are a handful of farms near my mom's house that I have physically visited myself before we order from them. These connections are what help us get the best possible products for our guests."
When it comes to Montana cuisine, local producers are the go-to as well. Mainstays such as Amaltheia Organic Dairy and Chance Farms in Bozeman, and Cordova Farms in Power, Montana, supply cheese, vegetables, and meat to Feast's ever-shifting menu.
"Because of these farms, I'm able to source items that don't normally grow in Bozeman, and get creative with our dishes," says Dupre. "Cordova Farms raises unique breeds of pork, like Red Wattle and Mangalista pigs, and heritage breed lamb. We feature all their meat for specials regularly, and they always quickly sell out."
Creativity is always on the menu at Feast, with Dupre whipping up specials on the fly just by seeing what's in stock. It's this creativity that keeps people coming back for more, and will likely keep Feast a pillar of the Bozeman food scene for many years to come.
"She was perfectly placed to...continue elevating [Feast] as the executive chef. She's a tastemaker. She has this ability to look at a situation and parse out the details, making the most effective plan possible. She has shaped the kitchen into what it is today."