Cooks 2025 | Edible Notables

Silver State Cuisine Defined

In search of Battle-Born food, past and present.

I am at the Flag Store Sign & Banner in Sparks, wading through a sea of colorful Nevada T-shirts, memorabilia, and flags to get an answer to this question: Does Nevada have a definitive cuisine? The shop’s owner, Eric Smith, proudly heads up the business, which has been a facet of our entrepreneurial landscape for nearly 40 years. His late father, Martin T. Smith, founded the company and gained local celebrity for his books Battle Born Nevada Trivia, released in 2017, and the Nevada Battle Born Cookbook, released in 2020.

Nevada Culinary Wanderings
Martin Smith came to The Silver State in the early 1980s, becoming a passionate fan of “the real Nevada” — the vast hinterlands, stretching from Reno to Winnemucca and Elko. The Smiths traveled the Great Basin with relish, encountering delectable Basque cooking, some of which found expression in the Nevada Battle Born Cookbook.

To collect the best Basque (and greater Nevada) dishes, Martin contacted restaurants known for mouthwatering cuisine. They included the Pyrenees Bar and Grill in Reno (now closed), the Star Hotel in Elko, Louis’ Basque Corner in Reno, and JT Basque Bar & Dining Room in Gardnerville.

About his father, Eric says, “He loved the whole Basque culture, the idea of sitting down communally and having a meal together family-style, in a restaurant with strangers, where you could be sitting next to a banker on one side and then a guy from Sierra Pacific on the other and come together over food.”

Nevada Nosh
The cookbook contains countless decadent recipes. But one stands out, according to Eric, and his father noted it well: “Of all the recipes our family makes for guests, we get more compliments and asked for this recipe more than all the other recipes combined. Chicken Echeverria is a wonderful dish and very easy to make.”

Of course, all of this raises the question, is there such a thing as Nevada cuisine?

“Nevada has a history of immigrants, of people of all walks of life, who came here for many different reasons,” Eric says. “Some to strike it rich. Some to get away from other people. Some to have a better life. And all of those cuisines came together and formed what we have … I think of the restaurants I went to growing up — The Liberty Belle, The Pyrenees and other Basque restaurants, plus Famous Murphy’s and Rapscallion. They were a hodgepodge.”

Ready to sample the hodgepodge for yourself? Dive into Nevada regional cuisine with Martin T. Smith’s cookbook, available at the Flag Store.

Flag Store Sign & Banner
155 Glendale Ave., Ste. 9, Sparks
775-355-0506 · Eventflags.com