Guacamole Dressing

Jack Moore arrived in Jackson, Wyoming, in the middle of the Great Depression. He and his wife, Berta, had previously owned and operated the Oasis Cafe in Victorville, California, but now, in 1934, he was fortunate to have found a job as the chef of Joe Ruby’s Cafe, the most popular eating and drinking establishment in Jackson.

Just two years later the Moores bought the business from Ruby, renaming it Moore’s Cafe, but sometime in the 1940s the couple decided to go their separate ways. Berta ended up with the café; Jack ended up running the Alpine Restaurant in the Wort Hotel, which had opened in 1941. Both soon remarried—Jack to Helen Robinson, in 1944, and Berta to Harry Clissold, Jackson’s mayor, in 1948. (Berta had sold Moore’s Cafe to Mr. and Mrs. Fred Meister in 1946.)

In 1950 Jack Moore announced his plans to build a brand-new restaurant at 75 North Cache Street, on the site of the old Jackson Hotel. He sponsored a contest to arrive at a suitable name for his new place, the story goes, with “Open Range Restaurant” being the winning entry. Jack and Helen Moore decorated their new restaurant with paintings by an old friend, Archie Boyd Teater, who would go on to create some 4,000 paintings in his lifetime, including one that Moore would use on a postcard for his restaurant.

The Open Range Restaurant was a success from the day it opened for business. Thanks to tourists and other visitors who ate there, its reputation soon spread far beyond Jackson. In 1951, for example, C.J. Ingram, a columnist for a newspaper in Jersey City, New Jersey, offered his readers this glowing report on returning home from a trip to Jackson: “A fellow by the name of Moore operates the Open Range Restaurant, where tourists and ranchers line up on the sidewalk waiting to get a table! The place doesn’t seat more than 50 to 60 diners, but the service, the linen, and the silverware are of the sort one associates with the Waldorf, the Barberry Room [in New York City’s Hotel Berkshire], and such places. Best of all, the food was fully in keeping with the expectations the setup suggests, yet the prices were strictly Jackson, not Park Avenue! Tourists should wear rutted paths to the place. It rates it.”

In 1953 the Moores decided to enlarge the Open Range Restaurant by building an eye-catching new entrance and a sizable lobby. Even with the larger waiting area inside, there always seemed to be a long waiting line for dinner. Jack Moore usually presided over the charcoal broiler in the dining room, a perch that allowed him to get to know most of the regulars at the restaurant by name.

Moore was not content to serve chuckwagon-type fare at his restaurant. This was a “cosmopolitan” restaurant, as Ingram had suggested, with unusual dishes on the menu, from appetizers to dessert. There were celebrities, too, including actor Henry Fonda, who in 1962 took such a liking to Margene Jensen, who had served him cocktails at the Open Range during location shoots for the motion picture Spencer’s Mountain, that she became the “mystery woman” on his arm—and, by some accounts, the recipient of his marriage proposal. (“Margene was working for Pappy Moore at the Open Range restaurant, and she struck up a friendship with the actor,” Jensen’s 2021 obituary noted. “She sat with Fonda on the set of “Spencer’s Mountain,” took him trout fishing on Jackson Lake, posed on the Snow King chairlift with him, and one thing led to another. The Hollywood press asked many of the locals who the stunning brunette was, but no one would reveal her name. Margene kept their secrets, and they kept hers.”

In 1963 the Moores sold the Open Range Restaurant to Gene and Ruth Ridenour. Gene Ridenour had most recently been the sous chef at the Jackson Lake Lodge in Grand Teton Nation al Park and before that the sous chef at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix. The Ridenours remodeled and redecorated the restaurant inside and out, enlarging the building by extending it 25 feet in the back. In 1966 the Ridenours opened the dining room at the Sojourner Inn in Teton Village, and they operated two other businesses—Ridenour’s Pastries and Ridenour’s Sandwich and Pastry Shop—in Jackson.

By 1984 Gene Ridenour was looking to sell the Open Range Restaurant. “I’d like to slow down to an eight-hour day and spend some time with my children before they all go off to college,” he explained to a reporter. “When you’re in the food business, you devote a lot of time to it, birthdays and holidays included. I’ve been in the business since 1943 and I’d just like to slow up to a normal eight-hour day.”

One deal fell through, but in late 1984 Polo Fashions, Inc., approached Ridenour with a proposal to buy the Open Range Restaurant so that it could be converted into a Ralph Lauren factory outlet store. The Ridenours accepted the offer, closed the Open Range Restaurant in 1985, and sold all its equipment and furnishings at auction soon after that.

Jack Moore died in Rancho Bernardo, California, in 1996 at age 86; Helen R. Moore died several months later in Valley Center, California, at age 91.

The Open Range Restaurant property later was home to the Legacy Gallery, which closed its doors in 2019 after 28 years in business. A Five & Dime General Store has occupied the site since then.

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Guacamole Dressing

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Jack Moore was an accomplished chef, and he devised this Guacamole Dressing for the Open Range Restaurant in Jackson, Wyoming, which he owned with his wife, Helen, from its opening 1950 until 1963, when they sold it to Gene and Ruth Ridenour. The Ridenours closed the restaurant in 1985. The original recipe called for "grinding" the avocado and onion before blending them with the other ingredients, but here it has been adapted to employ a food processor or blender. The original recipe noted that the dressing "is also delicious as a sauce for seafood cocktail."

Ingredients

• 1 medium, ripe Haas avocado, halved and pitted
• 1 small white onion, diced
• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 2 teaspoons granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/8 teaspoon monosodium glutamate (MSG)
• Dash Tabasco
• 1 drop green food coloring

Instructions

1

Using a spoon, scoop the flesh of the avocado into a small bowl, discarding any bruised, browned areas.

2

Combine the avocado flesh with the onion, mayonnaise, lemon juice, sugar, Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, MSG, Tabasco, and green food coloring in the bowl or a food processor or blender. Purée until smooth into a mixing bowl. \

3

Serve on crisp lettuce or any green salad.