WORDS BY ROBERT THOMPSON

IMAGES BY NATHAN KAHLER

If you think golf food is simply burgers, fries, and maybe some wings thrown in, you aren’t alone. That was certainly Ian Barney’s view when he first considered a chef’s job he’d seen advertised for a golf resort down the Oregon coast. But what Barney, the chef at Trails End, found at Bandon Dunes was far from what he’d expected.

“I find happy people make great-tasting food,” says Barney, who started as the chef de cuisine at the Pan-Asian restaurant located at Bandon Trails in 2021. “And that’s what I’ve found working here. It is a creative environment, and they’ve let me have at it. There’s a culture around food here that I never expected.”

That’s saying a great deal, considering Barney’s varied background. His culinary career—though he didn’t initially recognize it as such—kicked off as a teenager in San Diego. By 15 he was helping make sushi; two years later he was sent to Tokyo for nine months to learn from the best. After two decades in kitchens up and down the West Coast, and helping reestablish a family-run sushi restaurant in Oregon, Barney was looking for something different. “You ask yourself, ‘What do you want to do?’” he says. “I took nine months off and saw an ad for a job in Coos Bay.”

The gig was working in the restaurant at Bandon Trails, which had an Asian theme and had developed a reputation as offering something beyond the traditional fare found at most golf resorts. Given his background, Barney felt he could amplify it further and set about bringing his experience and creativity to the role.