On this morning in August, darkness still reigns outside as night slips into the light of day. Executive Chef Lanette Evener flicks the lights on in the 500-square-foot kitchen at the Big Hole Lodge. With guests scheduled to leave for fly fishing at 7:00 a.m., breakfast offerings need to be ready by 6:30 a.m., which means Evener needs to arrive at least two hours earlier.
This morning, “We’re going to have ham steaks and biscuits, and eggs to order, fresh fruit, and some muffins for breakfast,” Lanette shares.
She is assembling all the ingredients to make a crustless spinach quiche. She admits, “It’s actually an old Paula Deen recipe, but I add things to it.”
Gruyère, cheddar, Parmesan, and cottage cheeses are mixed with eggs, sour cream, and cooked spinach. A pinch of nutmeg adds the perfect finishing touch to the recipe. The concoction is baked in a pie plate.
Over the years, oatmeal pancakes have been the signature offering. “For 30 years and before I was here, there was a chef here for 10 years, and she made them (the pancakes), and they actually came from Sundance Lodge, which is closed down, but they were over the hill here, and that’s where the recipe came from.” The maple French toast is another dish that guests look forward to.
The Big Hole Lodge is located on the Wise River, a tributary of the Big Hole River. Craig Fellin started the lodge in 1984 when there were few fly-fishing lodges in Montana. The Big Hole River originally held the name Wisdom, given to it by Meriwether Lewis. Later, fur trappers renamed the meandering waters to the Big Hole, referring to the valley as “holes.”
Wade Fellin, Craig’s son, co-owns the lodge with his father. He shares how the establishment came to be. “My dad was managing Chuck Fothergill’s Fly Shop, and my mother was in the ski industry, a Montana native who found her way down to Aspen for Obermeyer, and dad was on the mountain rescue in the winter.”
Chuck Fothergill encouraged his father to start a fly-fishing lodge. “So dad took his old Toyota pickup and went rambling up into Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana and through Colorado, of course, and found this property, a 10-acre inholding in National Forest.”
When he returned home to Colorado to inform his wife, Peggy, of the spot he had chosen, “unbeknownst to him, this was just 40 miles north of where her father grew up.”
In the beginning, “Mom was the first cook, and Dad was the only guide. The clients also stayed in the same cabin with them. And then I’m told that when I came along, they had to build another cabin. I was keeping everyone awake,” Wade says.
These days, there are four log cabins and a two-story stone and log building for cooking and dining for a maximum of eight guests at any one time. After his mother left the property in 1990, “she and I moved over to Bozeman, and I’d spend my summers up here.”
The lodge went through a couple of cooks before Chef Lanette joined the team.
In 1993, “We had to fire a guy, midsummer, and I was too young to know what was going on, of course, but my dad got off the river with clients and found out that there was some misbehavior going on in the kitchen department and fired the chef on the spot. He had fifteen minutes to get the property. Clients are coming up for dinner in an hour and a half. He drove down the road to Lanette’s day cabin, meaning no plumbing on the Wise River, a single room, a bunk bed, a couch, a range stove that you had to light a fire to cook anything on, and he said, ‘Lanette, you have to cook dinner tonight.’”
“She said, ‘What Craig? I’m not cooking dinner tonight.’ And he said, ‘Well, I’m not either, but I’ve gotta host dinner. So, one of us has to.’”
To this day, Chef Lanette does not remember what she cooked for dinner that night, but she still recalls the anxiety she felt from that evening. “I was nervous for about 10 years,” Lanette shares.
Craig flew the previous chef, Lynn, back to the lodge to provide kitchen training for Lanette. Before cooking, she took care of the landscaping and housekeeping, but she admits, “I just liked to cook.”
From watching Great Chefs on PBS and collecting cookbooks such as The Joy of Cooking, The New Basics, and The Flavor Bible, Chef Lanette honed her skills. Although she did take food safety classes and a presentation class at the Monterrey Culinary School, she confesses, “I am self-taught.” These days, she derives much inspiration from Instagram and social media.
Lanette’s longevity at the Big Hole Lodge breaks the pattern of how chefs, in general, shift from job to job. “I mean, there’s romance to Montana in the mountains, the trees, the river, the Zen of standing in the river.” She has always been enamored with the outdoors and playing in Mother Nature.
She learned to fly fish and relished riding her mountain bike in the wilds of the nearby lands.
With her job, flexibility and autonomy in her menus, as well as the variety of dishes she can prepare for guests, make her work attractive. “I have a lot of leeway here to decide what I want to cook.”
Lunches are prepared alongside breakfast in the morning and organized for guides to grab, allowing them to serve guests on the riverside. Guides set up tables and chairs. A denim tablecloth covers the table with silverware wrapped in a bandana. A sandwich, salad, and a dessert bar or cookie make for generous lunches. Then dinner begins with a happy hour with appetizers, with options such as Bruschetta with Goat Cheese and Harissa, Venison with Black Cherry Chipotle, and Clam and Basil Flatbread. A three-course dinner follows, featuring a sample menu that begins with Marinated Cucumber and Chickpea Salad and includes Moroccan Grilled Rack of Lamb, Orzo with Lemon, Peas, and Mint, Mint Puree, Pistachio Gremolata, and Balsamic Pearls. For dessert, there is New York Cheesecake with Strawberries.
Several freezers on premises provide the needed larder for the protein. With “the nearest grocery store more than an hour away, and Costco two hours away, the kitchen needs to have items on hand.” “So I try to stick to the basics, and we are kind of meat and potatoes, and I love to grill.” She drives to the store to pick up the fresh items and gets excited when she can find interesting ingredients.
Three people execute the culinary program at the lodge. Lanette is at the helm, with sous chef Matt Crothers and server Lily Steinbach stepping in wherever needed. Both Matt and Lily are taking breaks from their schooling in Arizona.
Matt shares, “I mean, I’m lucky to be able to come out here and make really good food, learn a lot, and then have time to myself in such a beautiful place. It’s a really special experience.”
The unique experience prevails. Wade says, “When Dad started this place, it was because society needed to slow down and sit on the bank of a river and watch a pool of fish to see what they were doing and figure out what they were eating, and then figure out how to tie a fly that would match that and make a cast that would bring that fish up to the surface. And then very last in that equation was catching that fish or interacting with that fish. But bringing yourself to that speed in the world was the point. And we’ve maintained that.”
As the desire to disconnect becomes increasingly complex in the world of social media and technology, the Big Hole Lodge becomes an increasingly valuable haven where reflection and an authentic Montana experience prevail, complemented by delicious food and genuine hospitality.
