Executive Chef — Two Positions, Morning & Evening

The Complete Fly Fisher  |  Wise River, Montana  |  Big Hole River

Season: Immediate start through mid-October. Private riverside cabin lodging included.

The Lodge

The Complete Fly Fisher is an all-inclusive luxury fly fishing lodge on the banks of the Big Hole River in southwest Montana, hosting just sixteen guests at a time. Our reputation rests on three things: world-class water, world-class guiding, and a table guests describe to their friends a year later. We are filling two executive chef positions for the remainder of the 2026 season, and we are filling them now.

The Big Hole Valley

A word about the place. The Complete Fly Fisher sits on the banks of the Big Hole River — often called the Last Best River — in a valley locals call the Valley of 10,000 Haystacks. The Big Hole is one of the few remaining undammed rivers of its size in the lower forty-eight: wild, cold, free-flowing, winding past working cattle ranches and willow-lined banks, with the Pioneer Mountains rising to the south and the Anaconda-Pintler Range visible to the north. The river is audible from the kitchen door. Elk move through the meadow at dusk. Sandhill cranes pass overhead in the mornings. The nearest city of any size is a drive down a two-lane highway, and there is no glow on the horizon at night — only the full sweep of stars overhead, the kind most people have stopped expecting to see. The cabin where you will live is a short walk from the water, and the back deck looks straight at the current. The season is short. The light is long. For the chef who is the right fit, the trade — a city for a valley, a restaurant for a lodge, a year for five months on the river — is the whole point of the job.

The Team and the Two Roles

You will join an experienced Sous Chef already on the team. Both executive chef positions lead their own service and work alongside the sous chef in shared kitchen operations. Both report directly to the lodge owner.

Executive Chef, Morning Service — Owns breakfast and the streamside lunch program.

• Breakfast. Two daily chef’s offerings plus the standards roster (eggs to order, house-baked sourdough and biscuits, oats, granola, fruit, juice, coffee). The rotation is designed so a guest staying a full week sees fourteen different chef’s offerings.

• Streamside Lunch. The packed lunch our guides carry into the boat — and, for many guests, the highlight of their day on the river. The lunch program lives at the same creative bar as breakfast: composed, seasonal, surprising, traveling well in a drift boat for four hours and arriving on the gravel bar as considered as the plate in the dining room.

Executive Chef, Evening Service — Owns dinner and the kitchen.

• Dinner. Designs the menu, sources the proteins, plates the room, runs the night. Service includes the creative appetizers that greet guests as they return from the river — the first taste of the evening, before the second cocktail, before they sit down.

• Kitchen Operations. Owns purchasing, inventory, sanitation, and the day-to-day function of the kitchen. Brings a point of view to every plate that leaves the pass.

We welcome individual applications and team applications — a working chef-and-chef partnership is something we’d consider seriously.

The Standard

Our internal briefs for the breakfast, lunch, and dinner programs run thirty pages. We will send them to serious candidates. Four words frame all three:

Fresh.    Innovative.    Memorable.    Authentic.

Some specifics so candidates can self-select:

• We are a Montana lodge, and we plate like one. Cast iron, slate, wood, stoneware. Generous and considered, never fussy. We are not a Manhattan brunch spot, a Napa hotel, or an Aspen bistro. We are this place.

• We do not serve trout. Our guests are trying to catch them.

• We lean hard on Montana product — beef, pork, lamb, bison, eggs and dairy, root vegetables, stone fruit, berries, grains — and we adapt without apology when the Sysco truck delivers what it delivers.

• We rotate. A guest staying a week never sees the same dish twice.

• Coffee, biscuits, jam, the bread basket, the first cup on the deck — these get the same care as the entrée. The pace is unhurried. The first refill arrives before the second cup is empty.

If “two daily chef’s offerings, no repeats within a guest’s stay” sounds like a creative gift rather than a burden, keep reading.

Who We’re Looking For

• A working chef with significant time leading a high-end kitchen — boutique resort, destination lodge, fine-dining restaurant, private estate, country club, or comparable. Title matters less than what you have actually plated.

• A résumé and references that match what you put on the plate. We’ve recently learned the hard way that a strong résumé does not always translate. We will check carefully, and we will pay to fly finalists out for a paid working trial before either of us commits to the season. Travel and lodging on us.

• Comfort with the realities of remote Montana cooking — limited specialty deliveries, weather, the Sysco truck, working with what arrives.

• The temperament for lodge life. Small team, long season, river outside the door, no city around the corner. The cabin is forty steps from the water.

• A point of view. We want the chef who walks in with ideas, not the chef who waits to be told.

What We Offer

• A private cabin on the river for the duration of the season. Each chef has their own quarters.

• A real ingredient budget, and a lodge owner who treats the kitchen as the center of the guest experience, not a cost line.

• Compensation: $5,000–$7,000 per month, negotiable based on experience. Plus end-of-season completion bonus. Travel reimbursed.

• A well-equipped kitchen and a guest book full of people who come back every year and ask about the food before they ask about the fishing.