Dining Around America Today This is the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Bunker Bistro in Curry, Idaho. The building--if you can call it that, since most of it is underground--was originally constructed in 1948 as a bomb shelter to which Idaho's political and business leaders could repair in the case of a nuclear attack. When such things became surplus in the 1960s, a restaurateur by the name of Hank Patout bought it and turned it into a luxurious, exclusive gourmet restaurant. The menu takes full advantage of an underground river that meanders through a cave a few yards away from the bunker's location. The river has a natural denizen found only there: blind albino trout. The fish is pulled out of the water when a customer orders it. It is alleged to be the tenderest, whitest, most delicious fish on earth. They sell a whole grilled blind trout with mushrooms and giant escargots (both of which are also native to the cave) for a mere $11, on an all-you-can-eat basis. Indeed, if you really enjoy the fish, they'll grill an whole fish that you can take home for no extra charge. The Bunker Bistro also maintains a herd of underground pygmy cows. Looking from a distance like very fat Labrador retrievers, these are the descendants of a population of what their DNA indicates were normal cattle that somehow wandered underground about two hundred thousand years ago. They began eating the lush stands of mushrooms in the cave, and evolved smaller to be able to swim across the underground river to graze on fields of ferns that grow under a natural opening in the roof of the cave. The restaurant serves a whole tenderloin of this cave beef--about the size of a zucchini--for $12.50, with "unblackened potatoes" (just what they sound like), golden broccoli, and a reduction of pygmy beef stock and Diamond Creek Cabernet Sauvignon. The same all-you-can-eat program as with the fish goes on. Reservations are hard to come by; the very existence of the restaurant is never admitted to by the owners. But people who live around Boise know all about it and can tell you how to get there. (The security aspect of the original structure makes it hard to find.) To keep things from getting gloomy in the bunker, all the walls are made of plasma screens that create the very convincing illusion that you're dining atop nearby Lunch Peak. Reservations can only be made online: NOMenu.com/BunkerBistro.