SingleThread’s omakase-style ThroughLine dinner series with Audi unfolds with cinematic flair at Park City, Utah’s Lodge at Blue Sky, as 12 courses are paired with short films that bring the origins of ingredients to life.
The first course, Late Winter in Park City & Sonoma County. Photography by John Troxell.
On the first of a 12-course dinner at the Lodge at Blue Sky in Park City, Utah, I peer down at a platter that bears an almost disorienting resemblance to an hours-old memory of a stroll I’d taken on the premises earlier that crisp February day across fresh snow. In the remote, alpine terrain, tucked into the Wasatch mountains, a dark-blue creek cuts through the grounds. Pine trees line faraway, towering slopes. At the bottom looking up, you feel small but oddly powerful, becoming part of this ancient topography.
Now, on the dish: Snow, a scattering of grey stones, twigs of pine. Nestled among the rocks and foliage on the plate is a mussel shell filled with a rich-green tade-su sauce, a piece of silver sayori fish topped with an orange kumquat slice, and two beige, sesame-studded spheroids—a lily-bulb fritter and duck liver-parfait. In front of me, Kyle Connaughton provides some context. The head chef and co-founder of the three-Michelin-starred SingleThread is overseeing a nine-night pop-up at Blue Sky. Titled ThroughLine, the omakase-style dinner series pays homage to kaiseki, a centuries-old Japanese style of dining consisting of a succession of small bites. “It’s about stories and making you feel present,” he says of the tradition. The opener is the hassun, which the chef describes as “a snapshot of different ingredients that are in season to give you a sense of today, and a motif, or plating, that draws from nature.” Its inspiration tonight was indeed the surrounding landscape, with Kyle recalling how he had once gone snow-shoeing along the frozen creek with his wife and business partner, Katina.
Mountain range view at the Lodge at Blue Sky, Auberge Resorts Collection, in Park City, Utah. Photography by John Troxell.
Such evocative imagery doesn’t stop with the food. Throughout the experience, courses are interspersed with eight original short films from Emmy-nominated director Justin Taylor Smith. Supported by Audi—whose newest electronic Q6 e-trons also shuttle guests up the winding, mountainous roads to Blue Sky for the occasion—the dinner-and-a-show lends ThroughLine’s menu a cinematic narrative dimension shedding light on the sourcing of specific ingredients and other elements of the meal. Artisan’s Table, for instance, travels to the studios of artisans who hand-crafted the ceramic wares—such as the eighth-generation Nagatani pottery family of the Iga province in Japan; and Mitsuko Siegrist of Tsuchikara Pottery—out of which we are eating and drinking. “We wanted to be able to tell these stories about the ingredients and then immediately have you experience what it is,” the chef explains.
Following his childhood dream, Kyle gained his culinary foundations training in Japan. It was also there that Katina began her journey of learning to cultivate land. In Healdsburg, California, SingleThread’s restaurant is flanked by an inn and sweeping 24-acre farm, where Katina, as head farmer, oversees the growth of seasonal crops destined for the menu in addition to flowers for arrangements in the dining and guest areas.
SingleThread co-founders Kyle and Katina Connaughton in front of the fully electric Audi Q6 e-tron. Photography by John Troxell.
In the short Lifeblood, we see Katina holding a head of cabbage, smiling warmly as the California sun shines down. Seconds later appears the only vegan course, which centers on a mix of the very same cabbage from the farm at Healdsburg as well as from Blue Sky’s neighboring Gracie’s Farm. At the dinner, Katina gushes poetically of the humble cruciferous vegetable: “You harvest it right at the peak of its moment, it is perfection,” she says. “There’s something really luxurious about that.”
A course of scallops from Hokkaido harkens back to the couple’s time living in the tiny Japanese coastal fishing community in the early 2000s. Nearly 20 years after they resided there, Kyle was asked to prepare the same Hokkaido scallops for the Japanese Prime Minister on a diplomatic visit to San Francisco. “It’s the pursuit of the discovery of the ingredient that would greatly inform our life so many years later,” reflects Katina of this arc.
The only vegan course features silken tofu with Napa cabbage and Buddha’s hand fruit; and yuba with Caraflex cabbage and crème fraîche Shirae. Photography by John Troxell.
The short Tides of Balance documents the routine of harbor diver and SingleThread partner Stephanie Mutz, who typically heads into the water off the coast of Southern California before the crack of dawn to gather foodstuffs including kelp and sea urchin. Nearby, the Santa Barbara County-based Cultured Abalone Farm raises the mollusc while also restoring its wild populations. After the film, the fruits of their labor appear on the table: Santa Barbara-sourced sea urchin and abalone, garnished with dulse and sea lettuce cream. Kyle summarizes the relevance to sustainability: “Along the California coastline, there’s hundreds of years of overfishing of abalone. Sea urchins moved in, very invasively. They like to eat the bottom of the kelp, so then we lose the kelp forest, and with it the otters who live in there.” As divers like Mutz harvest sea urchin and abalone is replenished, the ecosystem moves back toward balance.
ThroughLine’s cinema angle also dovetails nicely with its take on omakase dining, rooted in the chef’s generosity with both food and anecdotes from behind the counter. “It’s really about that interaction,” says Kyle. Adds Katina, “It’s also the responsiveness to the different energies of each night’s group. It was interesting to play off of that and have that inform aspects of the storytelling.”
Guests receive the Kagoshima buri course as part of the 12-course cinematic dining experience menu. Photography by John Troxell.
“We have a saying that we follow at SingleThread, a translation from a phrase in Japanese, which means ‘to read the air,’” Kyle continues. “So, you’re not at a play. The guest has an active role, and that shapes the experience for everybody in the way that they choose to show up and interact with it.”
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