The couple loved water and fish long before they opened their fish store in Lombard. “I’m an avid fisherman, my wife’s an avid diver. We sleep on a water bed, we have a swimming pool and a 50-gallon aquarium at home,” says Steve Miller.
He and his wife, Ruth–“and our 10-year-old son Jon,” Steve is quick to point out–opened Today’s Catch at 104 W. St. Charles Rd. in Lombard in December and business has been, in Steve’s words, “really, really phenomenal,” even though to some folks a fish market may seem an old-fashioned idea, along the lines of a horseshoeing emporium.
A 20-year veteran of the human resources field, Steve had for a while been looking for a new career. “But we didn’t want a franchise,” he says. “We wanted something that reflected our passions.”
Ruth, as she has for years, teaches school but is often at Today’s Catch, as is Jon, when he’s not in school.
“Over spring break he was here every day,” says Steve. “I’d have to say he proved to be our number one marketer, offering samples of smoked fish to everyone who walked in the door.”
The store has an old-fashioned look, with antique fixtures, aged wood and fish mounted on the walls. One of its most distinctive features is an old wooden mail-sorting box that used to be in the Geneva post office.
It is decorated with shells that scuba diver Ruth has collected near her parents’ home in Marco Island, Fla., and functions as what the couple calls a “recipe reef”–each of its 80 slots filled with different recipes for fish dishes.
“Much of the fun is helping people understand more about fish, to experiment a little,” says Steve.
The fish is from Foley’s, a venerable Boston-based company that has been in business since 1906. “They supply for Ritz-Carlton hotels,” says Steve, with palpable pride.
Asked if he has any fish mounted on his walls at home, he says, “We haven’t gone that far . . . yet.”
