EAT YOUR WAY ACROSS THE U.S.A. Walkers Grill   As soon as you tear into the breadbasket at Walkers, you know a good meal is coming your way. Crusty, faintly sour, and with a soulful chew, this is bread that is pure and simple yet an emblem of real culinary expertise. You cannot watch the bread being baked, but you can see the young masters at work in Walkers’ exhibition kitchen at one end of the handsome subterranean dining room, where the modern meals are prepared in a whirl of activity. From the comfort of “James Beard’s meat loaf” with shiitake mushroom gravy and creamy mashed potatoes to Thai rock shrimp pasta sauced with a blend of cilantro and coconut milk, the far-reaching menu is a joy to browse. Pizzas, cooked on quarry tiles, have true Mediterranean character; half-pound hamburgers, accompanied by French fries and homemade ketchup, are flawlessly all-American. Walkers is the kind of place where some people come to splurge and celebrate; others eat supper here several times a week, simply because it is the best dining room in eastern Montana.       GUIDE ON THE GO with Andrea Lita Rademan   My introduction to the wild and wooly west took place the night I arrived in Billings, Montana, en route to the Great American Cattle Drive. Dinner with friends was at Walkers Grill,  a dinner house in the historic Chamber Building. The original kitchen has been opened up and the wood paneling has a new light stain but in the back room everything is exactly as it has been since 1910. Not so the modern menu, which features everything from pizzas to spring rolls and catfish to focacci. Most expensive item? A 12 ounce rib-eye steak for $17.50. The innovative chicken, fresh fish and beef dishes that made their way around our table received unanimous praise. We washed down chocolate hazelnut terrine and frozen white chocolate parfait with hot cups of Caravali coffee If the food was unexpected, an even bigger surprise was the emotional scene that took place when a handsome cowboy offered an elaborate marriage proposal to his longtime lady love. He had led her on a treasure hunt, punctuated by romantic gifts of silk and such, that culminated in a quiet corner of the restaurant where, as we watched, he got down on one knee and asked for her hand in marriage. If she had turned him down, I think he could have had his pick of every single woman in the room. But, eyes twinkling with tears as bright as the diamond he slipped on her finger, she gushed, “I waited for this man so long…I love him so much…and now he is mine.” There were few dry eyes in the house, including the handsome cowboy’s. Seems that, even in the wild and wooly west, gals keep wearin’ those silks and satins…and rings and things.