Search Recipes
Kirt’s Gallery
« Back to Cooking on the Wild Side Homepage
Cooking on the Wild Side with Kirt Martin
Kirt Martin’s passion for cooking is reflected in the ordinary to the extraordinary. His enthusiasm for cooking was first influenced by his French grandmother’s cooking of wild game and by his mother who is an incredible pastry and cuisine chef. Characteristic of his generation, Kirt toured the Gulf of Tolkin in Viet Nam with the U.S. Navy, expanding his culinary horizons in every port of call. After completing his tour of duty, he took the helm as the third generation in the family’s restaurant for almost 2 decades drawing acclaim from food critic Oliver Town as “An Oasis in Southern Minnesota’s Dining Desert”. Eager to embrace new challenges Kirt moved to Idaho in 1988 falling in love with the beautiful scenic wilderness, abundant wildlife and the people of the Magic Valley.
Attending the College of Southern Idaho Kirt received a degree in Biology. Being an avid hunter and fisherman, he had found the perfect place for his next venture where he started a catering business and taught an extremely popular cooking class at the Collage of Southern Idaho called the “Great American Cook Out”. Eager to learn more about his one true passion of cooking, Kirt felt he needed to get back to the basic techniques of classic French cuisine. He set out for Ottawa Canada enrolling in Le Cordon Bleu where he achieved both the Deplome de Cuisine and Deplome de Patisserie.
Returning to “Gods Country” in 1995, he opened the Snake River Grill in Hagerman Idaho, incorporating family traditions, French cuisine and local game into the menu. Kirt’s catering business has grown to provide an extraordinary daily dinning experience for the 1000 Springs Snake River Boat Tours as well as numerous events through out Idaho. Kirt’s passions are constantly forging new culinary directions using Idaho’s bounty of culinary treasures. Kirt has been instrumental in establishing new standards for fine dining throughout Southern Idaho introducing our region to wild game prepared in the classic French style. His philosophy is
“The most exhilarating experience for the hunter or fisherman is the opportunity to share his or her exciting moments with family or friends ~ gathered together over a meal of the bounty, when you have taken the freshest of ingredients and created a moment in time”.
Wild game dinners are a weekly “event” and it was through these dinners that the idea for a nationally televised cooking show “Cooking on the Wild Side” evolved. The weekly show, which premiered in the fall of 1999 on The Outdoor Channel, featured easy to prepare wild game recipes created in classic French style. This popular series ranked sixth out of 150 shows for that year. The program has also been shown on PBS stations throughout the United States. A companion cookbook to the show was published in 1999 featuring recipes of Kirt’s family, the Snake River Grill, the cooking series and is available at his restaurant or on line at www.snakeriver-grill.com.
Kirt is grateful for the opportunity to share his creative culinary style, passion for cooking, and zest for life by teaching cooking classes in both the Magic and Treasure Valleys of Idaho. Also, he has been producing product-cooking demonstrations in Macau and Hong Kong, China as a consulting chef for International Idaho Companies and the Department of Agriculture, Idaho Preferred.
Currently he is filming guest segments on Dave Langdon’s internet television show “Western States Sportsman” plus once again hosting his own show “Cooking on the Wild Side” to be found at www.westernstatessportsman.com, www.idahoexaminer.com plus on “MyOutDoorTV” www.myoutdoortv.com.
Kirt and his wife, Carol, reside in the Hagerman Valley raising their young triplet sons Daniel, Andrew & Benjamin, running the Snake River Grill and continuing the “Cooking on the Wild Side” projects.
About Kirt Martin
Kirt Martin’s passion for cooking is reflected in the ordinary to the extraordinary. His enthusiasm for cooking was first influenced by his French grandmother’s cooking of wild game and by his mother who is an incredible pastry and cuisine chef.
Characteristic of his generation, Kirt toured the Gulf of Tolkin in Viet Nam with the U.S. Navy, expanding his culinary horizons in every port of call. After completing his tour of duty, he took the helm as the third generation in the family’s restaurant for almost 2 decades drawing acclaim from food critic Oliver Town as “An Oasis in Southern Minnesota’s Dining Desert”. Eager to embrace new challenges Kirt moved to Idaho in 1988 falling in love with the beautiful scenic wilderness, abundant wildlife and the people of the Magic Valley.