New Year’s Eve will be Zane Holmquist’s last shift as a chef.
When the ball drops, the Stein Eriksen Lodge executive chef will have completed 48 years in the industry — 48 years of wearing the same uniform, he joked.
“It’s a weird thing,” Holmquist said. “I mean, I close emails with ‘chef.’ I answer the phone as ‘chef.’ My friends call me ‘chef.’”
Already there’s the reflection, the inevitable rabbit hole of, “How many chickens am I responsible for killing?” and “How many eggs have I cracked in my life?” Millions, he said. “It’s gross.”
After starting in kitchens at 12, the almost 60 year old said he hadn’t expected to retire. But after an emergency back surgery in March, then a knee replacement in April — bringing his total orthopedic surgeries to 15 — Holmquist realized that as much as he loves his job, there’s more to life.
“I decided at some point time will run out, and I wanted to do the things that I want to do,” he said. “Time outweighed, outvalued money. Time to do the things I want to do outweighed my love of teaching and coaching and cooking.”
Jan. 1, he’ll have finished 26 years at the Stein Lodge and 33 years as a chef at Silver Lake. He’ll have made countless meals, been featured on the “Today” show 11 times, fed three presidents and probably the most powerful person in every industry — though he won’t name names. He’ll have started the Culinary Institute of America externship program at the hotel and have taught hundreds of students. He’ll have worked sick, tired, broken, injured and burnt, likely sacrificing too much for the job, he said.
“I’ve worked every Christmas and Thanksgiving since 1982. Even during COVID, I didn’t skip. … My friends stopped inviting me to weddings because I can never make it,” Holmquist said. “My son passed away seven years ago. I worked every Christmas of his life. I worked every birthday of his life.”
But he wouldn’t trade this career for anything.
“Sometimes people love what they do. Some people love where they do it. … It worked out for me, as I’ve always loved what I do, and I love Steins,” he said. “I don’t think anything’s undone. I don’t feel like I’ve cheated myself.”
Finding his place
Holmquist said what he loves most about kitchens is they’re a place for everyone.
“When I was a kid in the ’70s, in the ’80s, in the ’90s, and you see all these gender and age and race things going on in different industries and cultures, the kitchen always had its arms open and said, ‘Welcome. Go to work,’” he said.
It welcomed him, a “pothead punk rocker” with terrible dyslexia, a giant green mohawk and a 0.73 GPA that barely earned him a high school diploma.
And he went to work, a self-described workaholic, a trait inherited from a family of workaholics.
“Work was an agreement. It was a handshake with the person you work for, your boss, your owner: I’m going to be there Thursday. They’re going to pay you for being there Thursday,” he said. “And there’s always been this sense of trust and relationship.”
In the kitchen, dyslexia didn’t matter — though he started in the age before spell check. In a chef’s uniform, he began to prove that “intelligence and ability to read and write aren’t connected.” Now everyone who made fun of him growing up is calling him for a last-minute reservation to the Glitretind restaurant, he joked.
But that success couldn’t have happened alone, which is the other side of kitchens he loves: It’s a team.
“Every chef that’s been successful stands on the shoulders of the chefs they learn from,” he said. “I had amazing mentors and amazing chefs that that pointed me in the right direction, and that were honest enough with me to say, ‘You’re an … idiot. Stop doing that.’ Without that guidance, I wouldn’t be sober. I may not probably be alive. I wouldn’t have the career I have.”
Home at the lodge
When Holmquist got his first job at Silver Lake in Deer Valley, it wasn’t the first time he’d lived in Park City.
Holmquist grew up in Utah, moving to Brighton at age 2. He spent much of his first years on skis, led around the resort by his dad, one of the first real ski patrollers in the state. Later, his family moved up to Park City for a few years, and he attended Carl Winters Middle School, the current Park City Library, and his brother attended elementary school when it was in the Marsac Building.
Park City in the ’70s was a vastly different place, he said, and he remembers when the first grocery store and the first movie theater were built in town.
When he was a little older, he returned to ski Deer Valley Resort with a friend in 1984.
“We’re driving back to Salt Lake, and we drove in front of Steins, and it was just getting open. And I said, ‘It’d be cool to work at Steins one day.’ And I was a young cook, 17 or so,” he recalled. “I always tell people, be careful what you say. It can come true.”
Holmquist doesn’t remember why he made that statement — maybe because it was new and exclusive at the time — but after 26 years he’s grateful for that younger self’s wish.
“It always very much felt like home to me, the right place and the right job, which in today’s world, it’s kind of a rare thing,” he said.
He stayed so long because of the owners, who trusted him to lead the culinary program. Maybe at their own expense sometimes, Holmquist said.
“I’ve always put quality before dollars, which not everyone likes, and not every company likes, and that’s why I’ve stayed here,” he said. “I don’t worry about making the most money for our owners. I worry about making sure we put out the best food we can.”
And he did things the hard way. Like with sourcing ingredients. Rather than having four or five large vendors to deliver food up to the property like most hotels, Holmquist had 70 vendors. It was a lot more work, especially to stock three hotels and eight restaurants making $28 million in food and beverage revenue, but it was important for him to have relationships with his suppliers.
He also fought to increase salaries for his employees.
“I started working getting paid $1.30 an hour washing dishes,” he said. “We’ve always been grossly underpaid in this industry. And I’ve always been a very big advocate of paying people fairly and paying people what their time is worth and paying them for the sacrifice of being in a kitchen. I’ve always paid people based on their skill set.”
Holmquist said the long tenure shows a culture of loyalty long before he joined. Several employees have worked at the lodge for 40 years, putting his 26 years to shame, he said. He doesn’t see that changing when he leaves.
A chef is a teacher
Another way Holmquist decided to lead his kitchen at Steins is as a teacher, a way to repay a debt to the chefs who had mentored him.
“When someone teaches you something, you’re only borrowing it from them. It’s not yours. You just get to use it, but you have to continue to give it away,” Holmquist said.
Having that mindset gives his career meaning, he said. Because in reality, his job is to sell expensive food to rich people to make money for other rich people, he joked.
“No one wants to be on their deathbed and that’s the thing on the gravestone,” he said, laughing. “So to me, it’s always been about teaching.”
It’s one of the reasons he started the Culinary Institute of America externship program when he became the executive chef at the hotel. As a Culinary Institute of America graduate himself, teaching those students has been a favorite of his career, he said.
But he’s not been an easy chef to work with, he acknowledged.
“I’ve always been a matter-of-fact person. I say it like it is. I mean, if you do something stupid, I tell you. If you did something great, I tell you. That’s sort of been my style. I don’t hold back. It just doesn’t work in the kitchen. We move too fast,” he said. “Kitchens move too fast to clutter with unnecessary things.”
He’s had employees who have gone on to pursue a wide range of careers in the food and hospitality industry, from becoming chefs, restaurateurs and restaurant managers, finding careers in food trucks, hospitals, hotels or Michelin-starred restaurants, or as sommeliers, brewers, cheesemakers and winemakers.
Chef Jonathon Miller, who worked under Holmquist for 20 years and will help take over the executive chef role, said the tough love never really bothered him. Plus, he’s had worse.
“I had to train under a French chef in Colorado, and he was never nice. And then coming here, it was like, ‘No, (Holmquist is) kind of nice. He’s at least kind of funny,’” he said. “I grew up with two older brothers as well, so I never got it easy. I always had thick skin.”
Miller described Holmquist as a mentor and close friend, so when they share their last cigar after New Year’s Eve service, it’ll be a surreal moment.
“As my wife says, my father’s leaving me alone,” he said.
Not entirely alone, though. When Holmquist leaves, Miller and the hotel’s food and beverage director, Jason Barrett, who’s worked there for 25 years, will absorb the responsibilities. So everyone is in very capable hands, Holmquist said.
It reinforces the chef’s belief that a kitchen doesn’t rely on a single person.
“If a guest has a great experience, it’s because of our team,” he said. “It’s all the team that makes it succeed and the leader, you got to own it when the team fails.”
Holmquist said he thinks he left behind more than he took, and there wasn’t a single skill or tip or recipe that he didn’t share 100 times over. He said he hopes he helped people find their passion in the challenging field.
The French pasture
When Holmquist leaves the lodge on Dec. 31, he’s not just settling into a leisurely life in his Park City home. That would make him go crazy.
“For me to not work is going to be a problem, particularly as someone who’s a Type A freak who has had alcohol and drug issues. So doing nothing is a very bad combination,” he said.
Instead, he and his wife, Robin, decided to move to Europe, a drastic life shift that will require ongoing learning. They settled on France for a love of the cycling culture, the food and the language.
“I want to be able to go see Tour de France stages in person and be one of those crazy people that stands on the side of the road for the whole day and for two minutes as the riders go by. To me, that’s the coolest day ever,” Holmquist said. “(I’m) putting myself in a position where I have to learn a new language at 60, with dyslexia, so it should take me the entirety of the rest of my life to be able to speak French.”
He said he hopes the demands of interacting in a foreign language, like buying a car or a house, paying taxes and exploring new neighborhoods will be enough to keep his mind busy.
The best part, he said, will be getting to figure it all out with Robin.
“I counted the days last year where my wife and I had a true day off together, including vacations, so not just weekends. We spent 50 days together,” Holmquist said. “It didn’t work for me. It wasn’t enough. I like spending time with my wife and doing things with my wife. She’s my best friend.”
The second best part will be getting to ride his bike. In the later half of his career, Holmquist began cycling for his health, racing in some of the more prestigious bike events in the United States like Ironman triathlons and Unbound Gravel. On a bike, Holmquist can zone out for hours, and after so many years in loud, busy kitchens, he’s looking forward to the solitude.
“I do 20 bike rides alone to the one bike ride I ride with someone else, and not because I don’t have friends. I just like to be alone,” he said. “Maybe a hand wave to other cyclists that go by, or a single-finger hand wave to the car that got too close. I’m good with that much interaction with other humans.”
When they leave Park City a few months after his last day, Holmquist said they’re not leaving anything behind. Already they’ve had a few yard sales, with a few more to come. He shrunk his cookbook collection from 500 to 200, gifting them to his cooks and chefs at the lodge, and he gave away 25 knives. He managed to let go of six albums from his collection of 150, admitting he’d rather get new clothes in the move.
If France doesn’t fit, they may try Spain or Italy. Maybe they’ll visit Park City in five or 10 years, just to check up on Steins. His departure agreement ensures that Chef Zane’s Spicy Nuts, his own personal joke, will stay on the menu for five years. He also said the hotel can keep his grandmother’s meatball and pot pie recipes, which have been there as long as he has.
“We’ve got a handful of things that have been on for a quarter century. Will they stay? Will they change them? I don’t know. If they replace them, it better be with something as good,” he said. “I hope I’m not quickly forgotten in Park City.”
Chef Zane Holmquist has used his grandmother’s recipe for a meatball dish at the Stein Eriksen Lodge as long as he’s been a chef there. Credit: Photo courtesy of Stein Eriksen Lodge 
While the executive chef at Stein Eriksen Lodge, Zane Holmquist “perfected” the Stein Burger, which is now trademarked and sold at a seasonal food truck at Deer Valley Resort. Credit: Photo courtesy of Stein Eriksen Lodge 
The chicken pot pie, a recipe from chef Zane Holmquist’s grandmother, has been on the menu at the Stein Eriksen Lodge as long as he’s been a chef there. Credit: Photo courtesy of Stein Eriksen Lodge
Are chefs still chefs when they retire? Holmquist isn’t sure.
“It feels weird to have a lifetime of stored data, and you just turn off the computer and close the door, and it just sits there,” he said. “Jan. 1, they don’t really have any value. I don’t have anyone else to share them with. That part’s over.”
But he won’t ever stop cooking, to his wife’s benefit, anyone who visits and maybe his new neighbors in France.
“In the countryside of France, somebody’s got to make hand-rolled tortillas and tamales and rolled sushi,” Holmquist said. “Those cooking experiences and opportunities that no one paid for, that meant the most. And that’s pretty much what the next step is, just cooking for people for free.”