‘Elevated’ Boise dining: New local restaurant, bar opens downtown

Even as the pandemic causes downtown Boise to flounder, a handful of new, locally owned restaurants are transcending the challenges with inspired food.

Kin opened outdoors last summer, guided by James Beard Award-nominated chef Kris Komori. This winter, it is offering delivery and pickup, plus indoor private events. Little Pearl Oyster Bar, created by former New York City chef Cal Elliott, started welcoming diners indoors and outside in October.

Next month, The Lively restaurant and Bar Gibbon will provide another outlet for contemporary, gourmet cuisine.

The food-and-drink destination inhabits the first two levels of a new, three-story building at 505 W. Bannock St. Led by executive chef Edward Higgins, 50, who relocated from Hawaii for the opportunity, The Lively quietly began selling $45 prix-fixe takeout meals to welcome the new year.

The to-go food has gone on hiatus for now. Instead, Higgins is preparing to launch seated dining next week, serving “modern, local, American cuisine,” he said. For the first month or so, a limited menu will be available on the first floor only — at Bar Gibbon, which has about 30 seats and a speakeasy in the back. The Lively’s second floor, which includes an open-air kitchen and 90 seats, will open with an expanded menu in mid-March.

Despite being new Idaho construction, the aesthetic is European. “I’m from Boston,” Higgins said. “This building fits Boston to a tee.”

“What we’re really going for is a little bit of a design that is new to Boise but feels Old World, if that makes sense. We’re trying to capture something that has a bit of age and feels like it’s been part of this city forever. We went through and patinaed our new lights in the dining room, so they don’t feel like we just put them up. We want it to feel well-worn and familiar.”

Michelin background

Owners Greg and Kari Strimple — New York transplants who moved here a decade ago — want to add fresh style to the city’s restaurant culture. “It’s a great scene here,” Higgins said. “They just wanted to bring in something that you don’t get to see all the time.”

During Higgins’ decades-long restaurant career, he has worked in kitchens from San Francisco to Tokyo. In New York City, he was chef de cuisine at Italian restaurant Insieme, which earned a Michelin star before closing in 2011.

The Lively and Bar Gibbon will offer “elevated” food, cocktails and service, Higgins said, without being traditional fine dining. “But it’s all the accoutrements you might find in fine dining, in the sense of the curation of the menu and the actual ingredient selection.

“The attention to detail we’re taking is at that level, but the goal here is to have people come in and feel at home. It’s not like we’re sitting here pricing ourselves at $75-plus a head. We’re really trying to make it a restaurant where everyone in the whole of Boise can come and have a good time.”

Higgins strives to serve food that “tells a story,” he said, starting with the farmers and ranchers, before culminating with his chef’s vision at the end. “I’ve done fine-dining French. I’ve done Michelin-level Italian. And then I’ve also lived in Japan. It’s all of those three things weaving into one.”

Many dishes will be driven by seasonal, regionally sourced ingredients. “But then we’re drawing in all of my experience to do something that is a bit more dynamic,” he said.

Opening menu

Highlights on the initial menu will include Gin Cured Salmon ($15, crisp potato latke, cucumber raita, cured roe, dill), Bucatini All’Amatriciana ($21, tomato sauce, Smoking Goose guanciale, chili, house-smoked pecorino Romano), Idaho Ruby Trout “Rockefeller” ($25, vermouth butter crust, shaved fennel, salsa cruda) and Snake River American Wagyu Culotte ($37, roasted cauliflower, bone marrow butter, chimichurri). And, naturally, there’s a hamburger: The Gibbon Burger ($16, SRF and Double R Ranch blend, melting onion, Beecher’s Flagship cheddar, Gibbon sauce).

Higgins plans to do a few days of soft-opening service in early February, then open to the public Wednesday, Feb. 10. Updates will be provided at thelivelyboise.com. Reservations will be taken through OpenTable.

Takeout orders will return in late March. But for the next several weeks, launching in-house dining will be the focus. Initially, the bar and restaurant plan to be open Wednesdays through Saturdays for dinner. Lunch will come in late spring or early summer.

By that time, perhaps, so will signs of the end of a pandemic — and a flood of customers from all walks of life.

“We want this community to use this place and feel at home,” Higgins said. “It’s not staged. It’s not to intimidate anyone.”

This story was originally published January 27, 2021 at 4:00 AM.