It was a surprise five-course meal. Which sounds daunting, but the courses came in small, exciting spurts. The first course, for example, was a one-bite appetizer: Swiss chard tartlets with Gruyère. Gruyère was a cheese, apparently. They were basically special mini tarts, filled with an intense riot of sweet and savory: sautéed onion and fennel, sweet dried currants, egg, crème fraîche, pine nuts, Parmesan, and—of course—Swiss chard and Gruyère.

I only knew this because Roscoe carefully explained the composition to me, like a science. I just sat there and nodded thoughtfully, pretending I had enough culinary chic to know what the hell he was talking about, and that I wasn’t some McDonald’s-eating American dipshit, which I was.

Next was the soup: Bündner Gerstensuppe—a barley soup consisting of various, more traditional vegetables and Bündnerfleisch, a Swiss air-dried meat. Then a fish course, which Roscoe was quick to point out was not the main course: brook trout over a ratatouille crepe.

Finally, the entrée: Berner platte—aka the “Bernese platter.”

It was essentially a wide range of meats served over juniper-flavored sauerkraut, potatoes, and dried beans. The original recipe called for more exotic meats, but seeing as this was Illinois, Roscoe settled for pork chops, knockwurst sausage, and Polish kielbasa, and slow-cooked the whole thing in AmberBock beer.

As a recovering alcoholic, Roscoe felt the need to explain to me that the alcohol cooks off. (Which I knew, obviously. I wasn’t that much of a McDonald’s-eating dipshit.) Still, I appreciated the dedication to his recovery.

I took one bite. Chewed. Swallowed.

“Oh… my god,” I said. I took another bite. Involuntarily made the most obnoxious dish-savoring sound imaginable: “Mmmmmnnnnggghh!”

It was impossible not to.

“Good?” said Roscoe.

I conveyed the word “good” with my eyeballs, then rolled them into the back of my skull.

“It was invented in the late seventeen hundreds,” he said, “after the Bernese defeated the French at Neuenegg. To celebrate, the people of Bern held a victory feast, everyone bringing whatever they had on hand—hence the smorgasbord of meats.”

I swallowed. “You sure know a lot about that country.”

“Well, Bern is just a city in Switzerland. But, yeah. I like to think of it as my other home. In fact, in a lot of ways, Switzerland is my real home. Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Suddenly, his fingers were interlocked on the table, and he was leaning forward slightly, and his full and undivided attention skewered me—every layer of me—like a kebab.

“How would you feel about moving to Switzerland with me?” he said.

I slowly leaned back as I processed this invitation. Or maybe I was just tipping over. Either way, I felt light-headed.

Roscoe cleared his throat awkwardly, like he’d never done it before.