Walk past Backcast on a Tuesday evening in mid-August and it looks like exactly what it has looked like all summer: a handful of tables catching the last light off the Spanish Peaks range, a chef working a small counter, no line, no fuss. Most people who live here have quietly filed this away as one of those things that wraps up when the leaves turn. Labor Day comes, the pop-up closes, done.
That read is wrong, and the way it's wrong tells you something worth knowing about how the next six weeks actually work here.
What Looks Like It's Wrapping Up
Since late June, Backcast at Montage Big Sky has been running Taikun x Omawei, a sushi residency built around chef Wei Chen and his Omawei brand, an omakase concept he's carried into resort settings around the country. Taikun Sushi's own booking page lists the Montage Big Sky engagement as running from June through September 2026, which lines up with what most residents have experienced firsthand: a low-key, direct-reservation dinner that's been easy enough to get into on a normal week and treated by locals as one more option in the summer rotation rather than an event.
That's the part everyone has right. Where the assumption breaks down is what happens to Wei Chen once that window closes.
What the Festival Program Actually Says
Big Sky is hosting its first-ever Food & Wine Festival September 24 through 26, and the lineup released in late July names more than 40 Michelin-starred and James Beard-recognized chefs across three days of tastings, dinners, and demonstrations. Buried in that schedule, on the Saturday night described as the festival's marquee event, is a dinner called Tips Up Omakase, hosted by Wei Chen at Backcast, with Nancy Silverton and Marc Forgione on the bill alongside him.
In other words, the same chef who has spent the summer doing a quiet, walk-up-friendly residency is closing it out by hosting one of the festival's headline nights, at the same restaurant, with two of the country's more recognized chefs standing next to him.
That's not a coincidence of scheduling. It's a graduation. And it means the actual end of this residency isn't a quiet Tuesday sometime after Labor Day. It's a ticketed, festival-priced event on September 26 that will look nothing like the dinner you could have walked into in July.
Same Chef, Two Different Doors
For a resident deciding how to spend the next six weeks, this distinction matters more than it looks like it should.
| Right now, through early September | September 26, Festival "Big Night" | |
|---|---|---|
| Chef | Wei Chen, solo | Wei Chen, with Nancy Silverton and Marc Forgione |
| Setting | Regular Backcast service | Ticketed festival event |
| How you book | Direct reservation, same as any dinner | Festival ticket, part of a three-day pass structure |
| Who else is there | Whoever else booked a normal table | Festival attendees from across the three-day program |
If what you want is dinner cooked by the chef who's spent the summer at Backcast, without competing for a festival ticket or sharing the room with out-of-town food press, the window for that is closing faster than the festival's own calendar suggests. The informal version of this experience ends before the formal one begins.
If what you actually want is the marquee night, the one with Silverton and Forgione in the room, that's a different purchase entirely, tied to the festival's three-day structure rather than a normal reservation line.
Conflating the two means either missing the quiet version because you assumed it would still be there in October, or buying a festival ticket expecting the same low-key evening you had in July and getting something considerably bigger instead.
The Everyday Restaurants Underneath the Headlines
None of this touches the rest of Montage Big Sky's regular lineup, which is worth remembering because it's easy to let a festival and a closing pop-up crowd out the fact that the baseline dining scene here doesn't move.
Cortina, the property's Italian chophouse, keeps its wood-fired hearth and handmade pasta program running as it has all year, and it's become enough of a local fixture that it's described as a favorite neighborhood spot for the Big Sky community rather than just a resort dining room. Alpenglow, the lobby bar, keeps its fireplaces and live piano going regardless of what's happening at Backcast down the hall. Wildflower Market still handles the coffee-and-pastry run before a morning on the mountain bike trails. Beartooth Pub & Rec still has the bowling lanes and the wood-fired pizza for a family night that doesn't require a reservation strategy at all.
That steadiness matters this particular fall, because it means residents don't have to treat the festival weekend as a dining crisis. If Cortina books out during the three festival days, which is a reasonable bet given the visiting chef schedule, Alpenglow and Wildflower Market aren't going anywhere, and neither is the rest of the rotation that's carried the neighborhood through every other September.
Nancy Silverton, asked about joining the inaugural festival, put it simply: "Big Sky has a wonderful and growing food scene." That's the right way to think about what's happening here. This isn't one pop-up ending and one festival beginning. It's a food scene dense enough that the same chef can anchor both a summer's worth of quiet Tuesday dinners and a festival's headline Saturday, and residents who know the difference get more out of both.
Reading the Next Six Weeks
For anyone living in or around Spanish Peaks who wants to use this stretch well rather than let it happen to them, the calendar breaks down cleanly:
- If a normal dinner with Wei Chen at Backcast matters to you, book it now. The direct-reservation version of this residency is running on Taikun's own posted window through September, but it will not survive the festival's arrival unchanged.
- Decide separately whether the September 26 Tips Up Omakase night, with Silverton and Forgione in the room, is worth a festival ticket. It's a different product at a different price point, not a continuation of the same reservation.
- Expect Cortina to tighten up around the festival's three days. If you want dinner there that weekend, call earlier than you would for a normal September Friday.
- Don't overthink the rest of the rotation. Alpenglow, Wildflower Market, and Beartooth Pub & Rec run on their own schedule and aren't affected by either the pop-up's close or the festival's arrival.
The neighborhood's food calendar has always had a summer rhythm and a winter one. What's new this year is a six-week hinge between them where one chef is briefly the throughline connecting both, and knowing that is worth more than either headline on its own.
If you're weighing a move to Spanish Peaks Mountain Club, or already own here and want a second opinion on where the neighborhood and its market are heading, Sandy Revisky De Leon has spent nearly three decades reading Big Sky's rhythms, on the mountain and off it. Let's Get Started.
