A LA CARTE FOR THE LOVE OF FISH

BY RACHEL HERGETT EBS COLUMNIST

I found the chef/owner of Izakaya Three Fish in his restaurant on a February afternoon, tucked behind a huge frosted glass door in the midst of the bars and restaurants on the main floor of the Old Bozeman hotel. There’s a beauty in subtlety for Paul Naugle, who most people just call “Sushi Paul.” He’s drawn to sushi because of the simplicity. Rice, fish and a little bit of salt can create magic on the palate.

“Sushi makes you feel something…” he said. “I’ve seen more people take a bite of sushi and close their eyes and enjoy it than I have with any other type of food.”

Paul recalls his first visit to the Naked Fish in Lake Tahoe, where he worked under Chef Tamotsu Suzuki, with a kind of wonder. Suzuki had developed a huge Japanese following who would fill up the bar on Thursdays, when the chef offered his friends and customers dishes that weren’t on the menu. Paul got a taste when he became a weekly regular.

“I’d never experienced anything like that before,” he said.

I understand when Paul tells me how he had eaten sushi before, but Suzuki made it entirely new. I felt a similar wonder the first time Paul served me. Sitting at the Montana Fish Co. sushi bar, which he helped expand from four to 10 seats, I told him I grew up eating Japanese food with my grandmother, Keiko, and was not afraid to try new foods. He served me a fish skeleton—the remains of a small mackerel after its filets became a variety of complementary nigiri, the type of sushi with fish pressed on top of tiny loaves of rice. Usually, I’ve found, it’s best to trust the chef.

But people don’t. At Fish Co., Paul would spend extra time crafting a sushi case with unique ingredients only to have customers ordering tuna and salmon off the menu. And when he said he was going to stop offering the rolls people know and love, one friend told him it would be the death of his restaurant. It wasn’t.

There is no menu offered at Izakaya, with all seatings (booked through text at 406-219-1259) served a chef’s choice “omakase” meal that allows for change with the seasons—or with delays in shipping from vendors on the coasts or around the world. Every day starts as a mystery for Paul, who has menu ideas based off what he has ordered from suppliers but doesn’t know which will speak to him as a chef when he receives the ingredients.

The restaurant may offer more warmer dishes in the winter, adding pork cutlets (tonkatsu) or savory custards (chawanmushi) to his tasting menu. But Paul doesn’t like to be tied to any rules, wiping the number of courses he usually offers in the menu off the website, eatdrinkplace.com. Maybe he’s best without rules. Sushi Paul was nominated for a James Beard Award for the second year in a row, an honor he found out well after the fact because he was busy fishing in Belize (a favorite pastime).

Perhaps he loves fish because he’s a pisces, Paul joked. Or maybe it’s because of his mother’s love for shellfish. Or his uncle Stevie’s influence. Paul, who grew up in Pennsylvania, remembers trips to the Chesapeake with Stevie, a man dialed into the commercial fishing scene. Stevie liked to “collect” types of fish. Paul rattles off their names, along with those he is slicing into strips so thin you can see through them as he talks—flounder, speckled trout, shima aji, kinmidai. He doesn’t have a favorite.

“I like the meal as a whole more than anything,” he said.

Sushi Paul said he is happier than he has ever been, manning his own sushi bar alongside girlfriend and mixologist, Maddi Honnold, and Ben Bugnon, who makes the hot foods. If he could change anything right now, it would be to find the right team of people to open Izakaya more than four nights a week. He has high hopes for a new hire who starts soon.

“I love sharing in food,” he said.

Rachel Hergett is a foodie and cook from Montana. She is arts editor emeritus at the Bozeman Daily Chronicle and has written for publications such as Food Network Magazine and Montana Quarterly. Rachel is also the host of the Magic Monday Show on KGLT-FM and teaches at Montana State University.

Dear Badger,

What happens when a certain group in a growing community takes over businesses, local housing, and more… and there’s no one in charge to stop them? Raising rents, lowering wages, making up their own rules while the rest of the community suffers, moves away, or just keeps placating them. How can we fight back and save our homes/lives?

Sincerely,

Usually Non-Confrontational

Dear Usually Not But Boy Howdy Are You Now Confrontational,

I frequent areas of Big Sky where gossip flows (which is literally everywhere) and I’ve heard of such things happening in our community. This is a fun question, as the other ones have felt like easy prey… a field mouse vs an ermine. So, I’ll start with a story that comes to mind. One of my cousins, a Yellowstone National Park badger, had a family of foxes set up a den very close to her sett (an underground badger home) in a very public area. The foxes became celebrities. Tourists loved seeing those fluffy tails, baby foxes, and fox family dynamics. They were adorable, but my badger cousin just saw them as annoying snacks. Badgers have never cared for celebrities.

My cousin was used to a quiet home. The foxes brought camera crews and reveled in the attention. So my cousin formed a plan. She fought the mother fox one day and went into the cave with a cub. The camera crews were crushed, as they thought the badger had done what badgers do… lured prey underground to eat them. But my cousin only ate the food stash the foxes had put aside. The cub came out to spectators’ cheers. My badger cousin felt that the warning was heard. Move out, frilly folks. Well the frilly folks just set up another den 30 feet away. The cameras flashed and the badger’s temper flashed as well. My angry cousin then scampered over to the new den and ate the fox cubs to the horror of the camera crew. Milquetoasts. It’s nature, people. This stuff happens every day in the wild. I think we’re seeing that it’s also happening in Big Sky.

Companies saw what Big Sky could become and did what large corporations do: Followed a plan. Part of that plan is to make all the businesses in town profitable, which means taking the humans out of the equation and making it just that—an equation. I’m sure they’re not sitting Scrooge McDuck-like behind a pile of money laughing as people suffer. I’m also sure they’re not weeping for them either. I think when you’re that deep into a project you just see the project and try to keep as many people happy as possible. Lots of local businesses pay higher wages and don’t have a high profit margin as a result. And that’s just fine because they aren’t in it to make tons of money. But larger corporations are, in fact, in it for the money.

You need to ask whether this is the town you want or the town you’re stuck in. Higher rents, increased property values, multiple exclusive clubs, and construction traffic are all part of the current plan. It was always going to happen, just like it’s happened in other ski towns.

I’m just watching it all from my sett, wondering who’s the fox and who’s the badger? I’ve seen it time and time again: The most vicious wins. Sometimes the vicious one is a big corporation with nothing to lose and sometimes (though rarely), it’s the little revolutionaries. The corporation can force the employees to accept lower wages because they know that some other kid will take the lower wages and employee housing.

I’ve heard folks outside of my sett say, “It’s not personal, it’s business.” Listen, I’m just a badger but I think it’s both. We have a ton of helpful community organizations, leagues, sports scholarships, and free concerts. We even have free mental health counseling, which I know most mountain lions use.

I’ve seen decades of young humans come to this town and live on low wages in employee housing. This usually isn’t their last stop. We must realize that, like the wildlife, lots of people are being driven out of Big Sky because their cozy dens are no longer cozy or affordable. My only bit of badger advice is that you decide whether you want to start a vicious fight or accept what’s happening as inevitable.

Are you a fox or a badger?

Sincerely,

Badger