BOONE, N.C. — Ever since he was young, Ken Gordon loved to cook. When he moved to the mountains it was no surprise that he bought a restaurant.

"We wanted a vegetarian diner in Boone," Gordon said.

What You Need To Know

  • The Gamekeeper is a restaurant in the mountains focusing on big game

  • They have things like emu, bison and trout

  • The Gamekeeper has rich history

When he and his then wife were on the market for a restaurant, they wanted something different. They walked into The Gamekeeper and never looked back.

"We just knew, like immediately, this is it," Gordon said.

The name says it all.

"We have bison and emu and elk. We have trout," Gordon said.

All of the food they sell are animals that are either indigenous to the area or were raised here. He and his ex-wife have owned the business for twenty years.

"Sometimes we have boar, and sometimes we have rattlesnake," he said.  

He said people don't only come for the food; they come for the experience.

"In the early years we had chicken on the menu because we had to, but we took it off because it wasn't selling. Originally people were scared of the game, then they started to trust us and beef as our number one seller it slowly moved down. It's now a battle of bison, elk and emu," Gordon said.

They try to make the restaurant feel like home because it has a rich history. Before becoming a restaurant, the building was once a summer house in a camp, which was started in the 1920s. 

Gordon said the history is why people head on up.