In 1997, Justin Carlisle was working at one of Wisconsin’s best-known supper clubs, Ishnala in Lake Delton – “cooking marsala and steaks on the line,” as he describes it. He was 18 and it was his first job out of high school. He and another Ishnala line cook made plans to visit a certain high-end, Michelin-star Chicago restaurant. Actually, the other line cook, Bryan Skelding (now executive chef of The Greenbrier resort in West Virginia), put it like this: “Do you want to go to this Trotter’s place in Chicago?” Carlisle’s response: “What the f-ck is that?” But he got dressed up, headed down to the big city and had his first fine dining experience. It was the first time he used eight forks in one night. Rather than fading into the ether alongside supper club rib-eyes, that meal was an entry into a world of cooking that the Ishnala was most definitely not part of. He went home with larger ambitions and a plan to try and replicate the crusted, seared tuna dish he couldn’t get out of his head. “It put me on the path – it changed my life,” he says of the meal. And now the dish is one of many that remind him of beginnings – Wisconsin beginnings.