Last Chair Kitchen and Bar’s last day of public service is April 10.  

The longstanding Whitefish restaurant located at Lakeshore Drive and Reservoir Road has been purchased by Barrett Rinzler, who works with a southwest restaurant group, who will transform the location into the Grouchy Grizzly casual eatery. 

Last Chair has been owned by Tim and Ali Good for the last 10 years. 

Tim’s culinary career began 32 years ago. He was a senior in college when he applied at his favorite restaurant with north African and southern French cuisine in St. Paul, Minnesota. From there, cooking would take him to Twin Cities and Ely before he moved to Northwest Montana in 1998.  

In 2007, Tim started a culinary company called Cuisine Machine. The trailer was a Whitefish mainstay, from the Goods’ driveway, to the farmers market and special community events.  

Tim and Ali took notice when Haskill Station went for sale in early 2016. The family friendly joint had been owned for about five years by Pat and Missy Carloss.  

Tim was really just in search of a commercial dishwasher, he joked, but figured he’d embrace it and buy the whole restaurant. 

Since then, it’s been a slow evolution from Haskill Station to today’s Last Chair, Tim said, with some of the menu items staying on to this day, from pad thai to a walleye sandwich, a goody bowl, a curry and a hearty salad. 

“It’s hard to change the menu because everyone loves it,” he said.  

Tim said that having wine dinners at Last Chair once a month was a highlight. They’ve been fun because he gets to be creative with the menu, he said.  

Tim also thinks fondly of some of the staff members they’ve had over the years. Not every employee was perfect, but “building a community of people, the way people get along, front of the house, back of the house, it’s more of a family,” he said.  

“I’m proud of building a family. If it wasn’t that kind of restaurant, we would’ve moved on by now.  

“The amount of comments from people who’ve heard we’re closing, and the love for the restaurant, that’s why we do it,” Tim said.  

The love for the restaurant had to be strong, because the work wasn’t easy. In any given week, Tim has done managing, cooking, dishwashing — just about anything except serving.  

The work has taken a lot of time with little allowance for vacation, he said.  

“You get away, and something happens,” Tim said, recalling a trip to Mexico, when the restaurant’s water line burst.  

It was last year when things finally slowed down a bit for Tim, not by choice.  

Tim broke his neck skiing and couldn’t do much but order food.  

“It forced me to slow down, and reassess life, in general,” Tim said. “I’m not living life when I always have to be at the restaurant.”  

The Goods tried to sell the restaurant in 2024 as well, so the sale has been a long time coming, and with the injury, it couldn’t come soon enough.  

Last summer, Tim and Ali found a property for sale in the North Fork. They sold their house and jumped on the opportunity: 20 acres with a cabin and beautiful views of the park.  

“It’s a dream come true,” Tim said.  

But they had to get a rental in Whitefish, to see Last Chair off – plus Ali is a ski patroller in the winter. 

The two met working at the Northern Lights Saloon in Polebridge in 2003. Now they’ll get to live where their roots formed and pick up part-time work at the Saloon.  

Ali plans on doing summer bartending at the saloon while Tim will get to return to the good bits of the job – the passion of cooking.  

“I just want to be a worker again,” Tim said. “I love making people happy with great food.”