Walk down West Main Street in Hamilton on a Wednesday around 5 p.m. and you'll catch the wood smoke before you see the building. That's Ember warming up for the four nights a week it's open. If you didn't already have a reservation, you're not getting a table tonight. That's been true since March 2024, long before anyone in the Bitterroot Valley had heard of Top Chef: Carolinas.
This year gave Ember's chef, Brandon Dearden, two pieces of national attention: a run on Bravo's Top Chef and a James Beard Award semifinalist nod. Both are real. Neither explains why you can't get a table. The dining room was already full every night before either happened, and both storylines have already run their course. If you've been waiting for the fuss to die down before you try booking again, the fuss already died down months ago. The reservation problem was never about the fuss.
What Actually Happened on Season 23
Top Chef: Carolinas premiered March 9, 2026, with early streaming access on Peacock starting March 3. Dearden competed alongside his identical twin brother, Jonathan, a corporate chef based in Washington D.C. who oversees kitchens for KNEAD Hospitality + Design. The two had never competed against each other before, and the season leaned into it, pairing them as line cooks on opposite teams during the Restaurant Wars episode.
Dearden had one clear high point: a Quickfire win worth $10,000, built around a theme judged by a panel of children and centered on "Christmas in Colorado" served "puffified." He won it with a maple syrup and corn nut ice cream. It's the kind of dish that only makes sense inside a reality competition, which is more or less what Dearden said when asked about it. Competition cooking doesn't give you time to think, he told the Bitterroot Star in April, just time to react.
That same Restaurant Wars episode, which aired April 27, 2026, ended his run. His team, Tierra Reina, lost to Carolina Queen, and Dearden was sent home. The season wrapped on June 8, with Rhoda Magbitang taking the win. Total time on air for Hamilton's chef: a little under two months, one prize, one elimination. If you're picturing a finale appearance or a season-long storyline, that's not what happened. It's a solid credential, but a brief one, and it ended in June, not last week.
The Beard Nod People Keep Getting Slightly Wrong
The other headline this year is more durable but also more misunderstood. On January 21, 2026, the James Beard Foundation named Dearden a semifinalist for Best Chef in the Mountain region, which covers Montana, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. He wasn't alone. Montana also placed Brandon Cunningham of Pangea Bar and Restaurant in Missoula, Earl James Reynolds of Herb and Omni in Whitefish, and Jarrett Wrisley of SHAN in Bozeman on the same list.
Semifinalist is a real distinction. Being one of four Montana chefs named in a five-state category means something. But it's a step, not a finish line. The Beard process narrows semifinalists down to five nominees per category, and that list was announced March 31, 2026. The Mountain region nominee that year was Theo Adley of Marigold in Lyons, Colorado. Dearden's name isn't on it.
That's a useful correction if you've heard the version of this story that stops at "our chef got nominated for a James Beard Award." He was named among the semifinalists in January. He didn't advance to the nominee round in March. Both things are true, and only one of them is still accurate to repeat.
The Dining Room Hasn't Changed Since March 2024
Here's what actually explains the wait. Ember opened in downtown Hamilton in March 2024 as a wood-fired concept built around a small, deliberately limited service model: Wednesday through Saturday, 5 to 9 p.m., reservation only. Local coverage at the time described it as fully booked every night from the day it opened, months before any television crew was involved. Over 90 percent of its ingredients are sourced locally, including a standing partnership with Avalanche Ranch in Townsend for its wagyu beef, which adds its own seasonal constraints on top of a limited number of nightly seatings.
None of that changed when the Top Chef trailer dropped in January or when the show wrapped in June. The dining room is the same size it was two years ago. The kitchen still runs four nights a week. The reservation system that was already hard to crack in 2024 is the same one you're trying to crack now. Waiting for the demand to settle down assumes the demand was ever driven by the show in the first place. It wasn't. Ember was a hard reservation before Brandon Dearden ever flew to Charlotte to film it.
Two Restaurants, One Kitchen Philosophy
| Ember | Grano | |
|---|---|---|
| Address | 131 W Main St, Hamilton | 203 W Main St, Hamilton |
| Cuisine | Wood-fired American, wagyu, local game | American-Italian |
| Hours | Wed–Sat, 5–9 p.m. | Varies by season, check current listing |
| Reservation difficulty | High, plan well ahead | Lower, more flexible seating |
| Ownership | Brandon Dearden and his wife | Brandon Dearden and his wife |
Grano Is the Plan That Actually Works
If the goal is eating something Dearden's kitchen made this week rather than eating at that specific address on that specific night, Grano is less than a block away on the same street. It's the couple's second concept, an American-Italian spot that opened the same year as Ember, and it runs on a different rhythm entirely. Fewer people are trying to get in on a given Tuesday, which means it's a far more realistic plan if you're deciding tonight rather than three weeks out.
The two restaurants share an owner and a sourcing philosophy but not a booking curve. Ember's scarcity is structural: a small dining room, a short weekly schedule, and ingredient partnerships that limit how much they can serve on any given night. Grano doesn't carry the same constraints, and it's worth treating as the actual answer to "how do I eat Dearden's food this week," rather than as a consolation prize while you wait out a wave that already passed.
If you're weighing your options for a night out downtown, that's the real choice in front of you: book Ember well in advance and plan around a limited schedule, or walk into Grano with more flexibility and the same kitchen behind it. Neither decision has anything to do with what happened on a cooking show that wrapped back in June.
Clint Roberts pays attention to what's changing on Hamilton's Main Street because that's part of knowing a place well, whether it's a new restaurant, a festival date, or a chef's name showing up on a national list. If you're curious what else is shifting in this corner of the Bitterroot Valley, Clint Roberts keeps an eye on it.
