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When we got backto the campsite, one look from Roman said it all. He was no dummy. Then again, considering we’d been gone for nearly two hours on what was only a three-mile walk, he had plenty of reason to make assumptions. But if he faulted us for our playtime, he certainly didn’t show it.
Instead, he showed off what he’d been doing while we were gone, pulling a line with four nice sized trout up and out of the water. “What do you think?”
They were gorgeous. And not surprisingly, I was starving.
“I think,” I said as I looked at the four fish, “that we’re going to be having ourselves a feast tonight. And I know just how to prep all this. If you guys don’t mind being my kitchen staff?”
“I’m in,” Trent said, “for a price.”
I side-eyed him. “What’s that?”
“Tell us more about yourself.”
Wow. They wanted to know about me. How often did a guy say that?
“Okay, sure,” I said. “Let’s see. Well, first, my family’s owned their restaurant since I was in diapers. Before that, Pops was a cook in one of those swanky downtown places that serves tiny bits of food on huge plates for even bigger prices.”
“So not my kind of place,” Ivan said. “I’m all about family sized meals.”
I could see that.
“So is my Pops, and he wanted to really be able to put his heart and soul into what he created. So he struck out on his own with Mom, who had to learn the restaurant game on the fly. She’d been a hair stylist, all about bangs and trims and trying to talk old women out of dumbass looking perms. But she said that customer service was customer service, so she handled the front of the house while Pops handled the kitchen. My big brother joined them when he was in high school, like I did later.”
“So are they still running the restaurant?” Trent asked. “The way you talk about your brother, it seems like he took over.”
“Pops and Mom are still the bosses, but yeah, my big brother runs the kitchen more often than not. Officially he’s the sous chef, but since he got married and had a baby, Pops has insisted on five-day work weeks for everyone. Family time and all that? Of course, sticking to that has been the challenge. There’s never any end to the work in the restaurant biz.”
“What about you?” Roman asked.
“I think they want to keep me in the kitchen as much as possible so I don’t go off, getting into trouble with strange men,” I joked. “As for me and cooking, I’ve always loved desserts more than regular line cooking. Thankfully Mom sees just how much they add to the average customer ticket, so they sent me to pastry chef school. She’s more than happy to let me mess around with sugar and whatever else I might feel like creating with.”
Minutes later, everything was set up, we were going hard, and I was in heaven. Roman’s trout was glorious, thick bodied and literally as fresh as could be. He was an expert with cleaning, and as he brought me each one, I laid it out on foil packets. We were going for simple but classic preparation, stuffed with herbs and some lemon before wrapping everything in foil and throwing it on the fire.
So Fiona,” Trent asked, “What’s the story with your tattoos?”
Roman glanced up, shooting me a look with his crooked smile. Yeah, he knew.
“The main one that I’m trying to get finished now is the Southern Cross,” I said. “I got these because I did a trip to Australia about a year ago to study with a chef in Sydney. That was a big bucket list thing for me, six weeks of international travel and learning.”
“Cool,” Trent said. “What else?”
“Well, there’s the dragon. That’s a nod to my youth, and how I was a huge dark fantasy nerd. I’ve been a sucker for dragons all my life,” I gushed. “That’s been my biggest one so far. I had to lay face down for hours over three sessions while the guy worked on it. That was big bucks, to be honest.”
I lifted my shirt just enough to show Roman the lower half of it. Maybe if he got lucky later…
“I’ve also got one on my upper thigh, probably my girliest as it’s just a butterfly the size of my palm. Haven’t done too much to the lower body yet.”
“Do you plan on it? And how do you want the fire stoked?”
“I don’t know, maybe,” I said. “I mean on more tattoos. As for the fire, see if you can get it going well on one side, but if you can give me about a third or more that’s just coals, that would be awesome. You’ll see why in a second.”
It was an interesting challenge, cooking over an open campfire. At the restaurant we used easily controlled natural gas flames, griddles, and ovens that could be adjusted at the turn of a knob. Over a campfire, I had to use nothing but a guess, distance to control temperature, and my own judgment. But I was feeling good about it.
“So tell me, Ivan, all those muscles, do they come from gym time or from your work?”
