Teton House opened inside the old Joe’s Place building inside the Walmart parking lot. The new restaurant has a larger kitchen with an expanded menu option of specialty burgers.

“It’s a smokehouse brisket lunch. It’s the belly of the cow blended in with the brisket. It tastes like butter and bacon has been (combined) into a new meat. It’s so phenomenal,” says Dexter. “You can order the specialty burgers for lunch in Menan, but in Blackfoot, we can serve them all day long.”

Some of the restaurant’s most popular items include the fresh seafood and the Tomahawk Steak, a three and a half to a four-pound ribeye steak, served with soup or salad, Au Gratin potatoes, vegetables, and dinner bread.

“It’s a good dinner option for a family or a couple because it’s so big,” says Dexter.

Dexter and her husband are working on getting a liquor license to be able to sell cocktail drinks at the Blackfoot store. They currently only offer beer and wine.

Though the couple is busier than ever, they don’t have any plans to slow down. They’re hoping to open a third location sometime in the next year. They don’t have a particular place they’re considering right now, but Dexter says opening in old historical buildings is appealing to her.

“I’d love to go back to an old historic building as we have here in Menan. I love this older building and the history behind it. In Blackfoot, it’s a newer building. There’s not much history (on the building itself),” she says. “But I’m thankful that everyone has been so happy to have us in Blackfoot and welcomed us.”

The Menan restaurant began as a bank in 1910. People in the area remember it as Watson’s Bar.

Teton House is located at 1217 Parkway Drive in Blackfoot. Its hours of operation are 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday with an 11 p.m. closing time Friday and Saturday.

They hope to eventually be open seven days a week once they get full staff up and running. They are currently hiring. If you’d like to apply, send a resume to TetonHouse @ aol.com.

The restaurant seats a little over 100 diners, Hancock said.

Hancock and Dexter came to the Rigby area from the Seattle area. He said they were going to come here to retire, but they decided they were going to get bored doing that.

“We found this little place in Menan, which used to be a bar, and I was going to convert it to a sports bar,” Hancock said.

He said he was working for a billiard company, which put him in different bars and restaurants for 30 years, where he learned how to set up furniture and position things in a more effective way in order to run a restaurant.

“What I knew about the restaurant business, you could put at the end of a bobby pin — and not the big, round end, the smaller end,” he said.

Dexter, on the other hand, has been working in the restaurant industry since she was 16 years old, starting as a server.

“It’s always been kind of a little dream of hers to open up a restaurant,” Hancock said.

So they opened up Teton House in Menan, and it was the start of something big.

“It took a little convincing that we actually had a menu and it was more about customer service than it was beer and wine with town leaders there in Menan, but we gambled on that and they accepted us in the community,” Hancock said.

“We do a lot of things with non-profit groups,” he added. “We’ve done Thanksgiving dinners the last couple of years for free for the entire community. We’ve supported the city with fireworks donations, Easter eggs, any community event.”

Hancock said he would like to continue that in Blackfoot, saying he doesn’t see any reason for not giving back to the community.

“We’ve got some staff now who are very experienced, and we’ve let them loose coming up with specials,” he said. “If there’s something that’s phenomenal, we’ll run it as a special.”

Among Teton House’s signature meals are a Tomahawk steak dinner for two, halibut that’s brought in fresh, and lobster chowder is a key feature. A Prime Rib Teton Dip is one of their signature sandwiches. The restaurant’s burgers are never frozen, with patties from a third of a pound to a half-pound, and meals come with a mountain of fries on the plate, and if that’s not enough they have endless fries.

When fully open, Hancock expects to employ 25-30 people with a young staff. “They’re easier to train with good habits,” he added. “I want people to be taken care of like they’re family.”

His attention to detail and general excellence even goes into how the restrooms are set up.

“You can judge a place by their restrooms,” Hancock said. “Our restrooms have a warm, clean feeling, nice décor. You’re going to know you’re not in your typical restaurant. And everything on that menu will be above what you’ve ever had, I don’t care what it is. I like entertaining people and I like to make other people happy, that’s one of the things that makes me happy. You’ve got a thousand different choices on what to eat, and when you want to go someplace special, where do you go? You can come in here in work clothes or you can come in here in a tux. It’s got a sports feel with all the TVs, but it’s the kind of place you’d be proud to take your mom on Mother’s Day.”

Teton House in Menan was becoming so popular that people were going to the town from far away just to experience the restaurant, Hancock said.

“We’ve had so many customers driving from Blackfoot that I’m hoping it takes a bit of pressure off the Menan restaurant, and it’s not too far of a drive here if you’re in Pocatello or Chubbuck,” he said. “We’ve had people coming from Salt Lake City, Boise, Jackson all the time. We picked Blackfoot because the location is right off the freeway. Big chains haven’t come here because it’s too close to their other locations. For me, I wanted to try it.”

To back up his comments, while being interviewed Monday around lunchtime, a customer from Blackfoot came over and told Hancock he was happy to have Teton House coming in, saying he’d been to the Menan location three or four times.

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Part of the appeal of the restaurant, according to Hancock, is the history. The building began as a bank in 1910. People in the area remember it as Watson’s Bar.

After moving here from Washington two years ago, Hancock and his wife learned the old building was for sale. They met with the owner and ended up catering his Christmas party.

By the first of the year, in January 2017, they decided to buy the building. They opened March 17, 2017 and within two months were serving customers seven days a week.

“The community did not want a bar. With their support, we’ve been able to turn this into a more fine-dining, upper class steakhouse and seafood restaurant,” Dexter says.

Teton House is located at 3563 E. Menan-Lorenzo Hwy. They are open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday and close at 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.

On Sundays, they serve breakfast from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. but are open until 6.

Hancock says they’ve been working with the Menan city council to legalize liquor sales. Teton House will soon be offering beer, wine and cocktail drinks. They are also looking into opening another location.

“So many people come in (asking me to move closer to where they live). We are entertaining a couple different locations,” says Hancock. “Maybe in the St. Anthony area or Blackfoot area.”