Jay Bentley

Jay Bentley has been the founder, chef, and owner, of several Montana restaurants over the years including The Continental Divide, in Ennis, and the The Mint Bar and Café in Belgrade outside of Bozeman. In 2013 he and his wife Mary Timmer Bentley opened a restaurant/steakhouse in downtown Bozeman, Montana called,surprisingly enough, “OPEN RANGE”, featuring farm to market regional cuisine and of course Montana raised beef, bison, pork and lamb.

At the ancient age of 40 he got his start as an apprentice in New Orleans under transplanted Parisian chef Daniel Bonnot at the venerable Louis XVI restaurant and worked several other French kitchens in the South. In addition to his restaurants, he went on to serve stints as corporate chef to several major American corporations including Whirlpool, Sunbeam, and Coleman, as well the American chef for Schott Corp, a major manufacturer of glass cooktops based in Mainz, Germany.

Jay, along with his wife Mary and their dog Kit, , reside in Bozeman, a haven for all kinds of outdoor enthusiasts, nestled in the mountains of Southwest Montana where he eats, drinks, and chases wild trout with an old bamboo fly rod.

This is his first and maybe his last cookbook.