Joseph Raney

At Skogen Kitchen in Custer, South Dakota, the work reads as place-first cooking: direct, grounded, and shaped by a dining room that values plain speech over performance. Joseph Raney is the chef there, and the restaurant’s identity has settled around that same register. He has described the approach simply: “We just began cooking what we love to cook and serving guests the way we know how.” The move to Custer was as much about fit as it was about geography.

Raney has said the change came out of wanting a setting that matched the kind of hospitality he wanted to practice. “My wife is from a small town in Minnesota, and she just wanted to find that again. We were ready for a new adventure.” He also framed the appeal in terms of the people around the table: “We wanted something universal, and we realized the people here were a lot more down-to-earth.”

As Executive Chef at Skogen Kitchen, Joseph Raney shapes the tempo of service and the standards behind it. The job, as he describes it, is less about image than about maintaining a room where the line, the team, and the plate are pulling in the same direction. His language around leadership is blunt and practical: the kitchen runs on showing up, working hard, and putting real effort into the food. Accountability, in Raney’s telling, sits at the center of the craft.

“If people aren’t showing up for work or working hard, and the cooks aren’t putting everything they have into the dishes, then who am I?” That kind of standard tells you as much about the kitchen culture as any menu description: the expectation is that the work be visible in the plate, and the plate be honest about the effort that made it.

Joseph's signature dishes include sweet corn ravioli and Smoked Salmon Deviled Eggs. Read together, they point to a kitchen comfortable with recognizable forms, handled with enough restraint to let texture and flavor do the work. One leans into sweetness and softness; the other brings smoke and salt into a familiar, compact format. The common thread is clarity: dishes that make sense quickly, without needing embellishment.

Joseph's honors include James Beard Award semifinalist, Best Chef: Midwest (2023).