Amid the beauty of the Black Hills, a charming little restaurant sits, offering both a cozy atmosphere and unique dishes. The fittingly named Skogen Kitchen (meaning the kitchen in the forest) is nestled in Custer, South Dakota, a town of just over 1,800.
The restaurant lays just short of Main St., right along the main highway leading into town. The cozy interior is decorated with warm, rich wood and red and teal accents. An open concept kitchen greets customers entering the establishment, and passersby can even watch the staff cook from the street.
Skogen features many different cuisines, most notably, Italian, Scandinavian and American-fusion. However, it’s rotating menu also features many other cultures.
This diverse culinary combination was brought together by Joseph Raney, the head chef and owner of the establishment.
Although his successful establishment and diverse menu are a testament to his skill as a chef, the two-time nominee of the prestigious James Beard Award for “Best Chef: Midwest” began his culinary career in an unexpected and unorthodox manner.
Raney grew up in Los Angeles, California, specifically the Pasadena and Altadena area.
He initially enrolled in college as a philosophy major, but found himself trying to rationalize too many parts of existence and quickly fell out of love with the field.
“I just got burnt out being taught that reality doesn’t exist,” Raney said. “Honestly, I was just walking by a culinary school in Hollywood, and thought, ‘I’m gonna give it a chance.’”
Intrigued by the culinary arts, Raney dropped out of school and enrolled in the Hollywood Kitchen Academy.
After a few hard years ingraining himself within the culinary world, Raney entered the job market looking to continue his education in the real world.
Early in his career, Raney worked under many reknowned chefs in the Los Angeles and Hollywood areas, committing a year to each restaurant in an effort to gain diverse knowledge about cooking with different techniques and cuisines.
“It took a lot of commitment and took some hard times,” Raney said. “I didn’t think I was going to end up in the culinary arts. I never would have guessed that about myself as a little boy… I just kept sticking with it, even during times I just wasn’t enjoying it.
No matter how much change Raney experienced while he was in culinary school and the early parts of his career in the kitchen, he never forgot the value of creating personal bonds with his coworkers and seeing them as people rather than merely a means-to-an-end. This extended to how he views his employees, even after receiving praise and recognition for his accomplishments.
“It makes me reflect on how well the team has performed,” Raney said. “I mean, it really shouldn’t be ‘Best Chef: Midwest.’ It should be ‘Best Team: Midwest’ because if someone walks through the door and my staff’s not on point, that’s a reflection [on me].”
At the heart of this team is Raney’s wife, Eliza Raney, who has been an important part of his journey since the beginning.
The two met in Newport Beach, California, where they were both working at the time; Eliza was a server, and Joseph worked as a sous chef at the same restaurant. They started as friends, and their relationship eventually evolved into more.
After a few years, the couple decided it was time to raise a family. After spending the entirety of their relationship in a big city, they wanted a change of scenery.
“My wife is a small town girl, and she didn’t want to be in the city anymore,” Raney said. “She kept reminding me that she definitely wanted to look at a small town as a long-term option and not a city… We literally found [Custer] in a random book about the Black Hills area… It was just like, ‘My wife wants to move to a small town, so let’s go find one.’”
Mrs. Raney fell in love with the small town located in the southern Black Hills.
With no fleshed-out career plans, Mr. and Mrs. Raney dropped their lives in California and moved to Custer to start the next chapter of their lives.
“It’s amazing living in a small town,” Raney said. “Everybody just kind of looks out for each other. It’s really cool to kind of see how the community grows over time.”
The community may have been welcoming, but the real problem was how the family was going to make ends meet.
When the Raneys first moved, there were some uncertain times they had to work through.
“I honestly thought I was going to have to change career paths again,” Raney said. “I’m a decent writer, so I even looked at the Rapid City Journal, but I was really missing cooking.”
Raney took a job at the local Sage Creek Grill to satisfy his urge to cook, which was where he met Chris Grohs.
Grohs and his family had moved from Kansas City, Missouri to Custer 30 days before the Raneys had with the same goal in mind: to raise his family away from the big city.
Not only did Grohs and Raney have similarities in their family goals, but they also both had extensive culinary knowledge.
“I started out when I was a young boy, like fourteen or fifteen years old, working in a truck stop, and I was just really good at what I did,” Grohs said. “Then when I moved to [Kansas City], it was easy for me to get a job in the culinary field, so I just kind of leaned on that and went from there.”
Grohs was able to work at many acclaimed restaurants under skilled chefs who began to teach him more about the fine dining side of the culinary arts. He found relief in the creative freedom of this aspect of the culinary world instead of the cookie-cutter molds he had been fitting his cooking into at more corporate-oriented establishments.
This newfound freedom and inspiration would eventually become what led the Raneys to including Grohs in the work towards Skogen.
Grohs is now Skogen Kitchen’s Chef de Cuisine, a role in which he manages the flow of the kitchen.
Skogen opened in May of 2017, one year after the Raneys moved to Custer.
“It was definitely [Mrs. Raney’s] belief in me that really started this restaurant,” Raney said. “I don’t think I had very much confidence, but she had it all for both of us… It’s also really cool to see how the community has embraced the restaurant. You don’t realize how much impact you have until you actually try to make an impact.”
With the restaurant open and operational, Raney and Grohs were able to unleash their creativity without limits, creating dishes that caught attention on a national scale.
Their menu became a showcase of bold innovation and refined technique, featuring creations such as a spin on a New England favorite: lobster steam buns with Holindaise sauce garnished with fresh scallions. Another dish that drew praise was their brown butter basted raviolo stuffed with a whole soft-boiled egg yolk and ricotta, topped with freshly grated parmesan and bianchetti truffle.
They also impressed diners with compressed suckling pig served with beet root puree and huckleberry jus–the drippings of the pork infused with huckleberry–garnished with watercress and chopped rhubarb.
Their creativity didn’t stop at savory dishes.
One of their most popular dishes is their house-made vanilla gelato topped with parmesan, pinenuts and local honey. A seemingly strange combination dubbed “Chef’s Happy Accident” that was discovered when Raney was checking the quality of his cheeses and making gelato at the same time. He sampled some parmesan and then tried the gelato soon after, and was amazed by the resulting flavor.
While crafting such creative dishes has led to the team being nominated for national awards, that doesn’t make them immune to feelings of self-doubt. When that does happen, the team at Skogen has the Custer community to raise them up.
“Sometimes you don’t feel quite appreciated enough,” Grohs said. “But when you go out in the community and you’re recognized, and everybody’s like, ‘I had a great dinner, thank you so much,’ It really boosts your self-worth… [Working at Skogen] is more than just a job for me. It’s my family.”
Skogen has established itself well within the zeitgeist of Custer, South Dakota. The restaurant continues to manifest a family-like community and an attitude that keeps its business looking towards the future.
At the center of Skogen’s forward-thinking mindset is a strong trust in the people who help bring its vision to life every day. Raney and Grohs have built more than just a kitchen staff, they’ve created a team rooted in mutual respect and shared responsibility.
“When you trust people, they cover your back,” Raney said. “They cover the dark shadows of things that you’re not particularly good at. So, when you give people that responsibility, it’s amazing how much they answer that in return. That’s what I’ve been able to find in my team.”
