FIRST COURSE
Walking into Kristy Olsen’s Eden Restaurant in Raymond feels like coming home.
This is true even if your actual home doesn’t look anything like the 120-year-old manor in the centre of this small southern Alberta town. And it’s true even if your own home doesn’t have chandeliers, antiques, fine china and small plastic dinosaurs hidden everywhere (that last feature is courtesy of Olsen’s12-year-old daughter, Nohla).
That familiar feeling at Eden Restaurant has more to do with the warm welcome by the host, who quickly feels like a friend. It grows thanks to the comfort and calm of the surroundings and the white walls, wide windows and sunlight that floods the space. Before you know it, you’re offering fellow guests a drink and making your way to your place at the table – as easily as you would in your own home.
Then there’s the food. Olsen’s creations remind you that you are, in fact, at the restaurant of a talented and experienced chef. Whether you’re diving into pork belly served with a ginger orange glaze, pickled apples and a cauliflower coconut purée; duck breast served with cherry and rosemary bread pudding, parsnip purée and a sour cherry sauce; or a completely new creation – Olsen’s choices are simply stunning. And they’re always a surprise. She plans the menu each day based on what’s in season, what she can get locally, and what sounds like fun for her to prepare.
“Kristy’s amazing,” says Jodi Witzke (General Studies 2002), a regular guest at Eden Restaurant. “The food is unbelievable. There’s really nothing like it.”
Eden Restaurant started as an innovative solution to a problem faced by the entire restaurant industry at the start of the pandemic: how to keep running a business that is focused on bringing people together when it was literally impossible for groups to gather. Olsen’s solution? Open up a stately, historic home as a private restaurant serving a different menu every night for up to 10 people at a time (or less, depending on COVID restrictions).
As Olsen prepares to celebrate the restaurant’s second anniversary, she has realized her unique business model has also been an inspired way to have time to raise a daughter, return to her roots, reduce food waste and cover her bills, all while offering guests beautiful, interesting and remarkable meals.
“I love cooking. I never want to do anything else,” says Olsen, a 2013 graduate of Lethbridge College’s Culinary Careers diploma program, a 2015 grad of the Cook Apprentice program, and 2023 grad of the Baker Apprentice program. “And it’s the best feeling in the world when your house is full of laughter all day and night. Eden Restaurant is like a family dinner, in my house, five nights a week. It’s pretty awesome.”
SECOND COURSE
“Kristy’s soup is something to die for,” says Brittany Noble (Business Administration – Management, 2009; General Arts and Science 2012), who has been a regular guest at Eden since 2021. “I don’t know if I’ve ever had soup that has so much dimension. The different flavours that you taste in every spoonful – it is beautiful.”
Olsen comes from a long line of chefs who could make a memorable soup. The first chef in her life was her grandfather Vern Olsen, a founder and builder of Lethbridge College’s nearly 60-year-old Culinary Arts program. He’s the one who started elevating the industry to new levels in Lethbridge in the 1960s, helping to launch food fairs, gourmet suppers and more. He also taught the program’s current chair, Chef Doug Overes (Professional Cooking 1987, Distinguished Alumnus 1992) as well as many of the program’s recent and current instructors. In a Jan. 22, 1975, article of The Endeavour, Olsen was heralded as “one of the best instructors in the business.”
Some of Vern Olsen’s story is shared in Lethbridge Community College: The First 25 Years, written by former Communications Arts instructor Georgia Green Fooks. She described how Vern Olsen helped launch the Food Fair, which at its peak in the early 1970s drew nearly 10,000 people to the college for a smorgasbord supper.
Overes remembers Vern Olsen as being “a hard man! He bullied and pushed you so hard that if you didn’t show grit and work ethic, he didn’t like you and vice versa. But if he liked you, he would show you the moon and stars – the cool stuff. He tried to break you so he could build you up bigger and better than before. Many of us who were mentored by Vern and taken under his wing are still in the industry some 40 years later. He is the sole reason I went on to hotel and restaurant administration, baking and cooking.”
Kristy Olsen’s connections to her grandpa can be seen on her hands, which are tattooed with the words “Yes, Chef,” his birth and death years of 1926 and 2013, and the numbers 8/6.
“’Yes, chef’ is a term of respect in the kitchen,” explains Olsen. “You say ‘yes, chef’ to everything. It gets ingrained in you when you are coming through the industry. Grandpa was a very influential chef in this area, but I didn’t really get to know him as a chef, just as a grandpa. I never got to experience him in the kitchen – he died in 2013, just as my career was starting. And in the kitchen, 86 is when you run out of something.”
One of the best parts about being at Lethbridge College for all three programs is that she has learned from instructors who were once her grandfather’s students. “Most of my teachers were taught by my grandpa,” she says. “Even now in the Bake Shop, I get to hear stories about him all the time.”
THIRD COURSE
If you asked typical home cooks how to make a beet salad, they might suggest roasting beets, tossing them with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper, and maybe throwing some cheese or nuts on top.
Olsen’s beet salad has some of those same elements – but she elevates everything from the standard to the sublime. She does start with roasted beets tossed in a turmeric vinaigrette, but she artfully constructs the salad with layers of beet, orange, arugula, pistachios, and goat cheese that she’s whipped with honey.
“I don’t eat vegetables unless I eat them at Kristy’s,” says Noble, who works as a sales manager at Bridge City Chrysler in Lethbridge, with a hearty laugh.
While Olsen comes from a long line of chefs – in addition to her grandfather, her parents, aunts and uncles all worked in the food industry – she spent the first part of her career working “front-of-house,” first as a host, then as a server, then as a bartender. She loved the work, especially the people and the fact they usually went out to eat when they were happy, which made her happy, too. But when she became pregnant with her daughter, she realized bartending hours – which took her home at 4 a.m. many days – wouldn’t work.
That’s when she came to Lethbridge College. “I remember deciding I was going to switch from bartending to cooking and I was like, terrified. I was really good at bartending,” she recalls. But she started in the Culinary Careers diploma program and progressed to the Cook Apprentice program, and before she knew it, she was really good at cooking, too.
“Kristy is very much like her grandpa!” says Chef Overes. “She has a very thick skin and is tireless. Her grit, desire to excel, determination and need for furthering her education shows not only a hunger for lifelong learning, but a desire to follow in her grandfather’s footsteps and do him proud.”
In addition to her regular coursework, when Olsen was a student she signed up for exchanges, “stages” (or internships), conferences and competitions that took her from Edmonton to Ottawa, Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island, and as far away as Germany. “The chefs here at the college pushed me and did not let me get away with anything,” she recalls. “They definitely helped put me together as a human being.”
She came back to the college in 2022 to complete the Baker Apprenticeship program, wanting to learn from Chef Overes again, and she says she is grateful for all of her Lethbridge College learning opportunities. “Going through the Lethbridge College program for cooking was such a fun adventure,” she says. “I was endlessly challenged, and given a place I could truly unleash my creativity. My instructors took so much pride in coaching us all, and they encouraged me to grow as a person as well as a cook. Coming back for my second Red Seal has been so wonderful. They constantly make me feel welcome and as if there is an entire new world to explore, all while still loving the industry we chose.”
FOURTH COURSE
When Olsen first left the college after completing the Cook Apprenticeship program, she took advice from Chef Overes with her. “I remember Chef telling me that the best thing you can have was a full toolbox,” she says, explaining that he encouraged grads to try different jobs and different kinds of cooking – everything from breakfast to fine dining.
So she did just that, working up to 80 hours a week in a kitchen for over 10 years. By 2020, she was working as a sous chef at Purlieu Bistro in Calgary, which had just been named one of Canada’s top 10 new restaurants. Five days after the restaurant received that honour, everything closed because of the pandemic. “It was like up, up, up and then everything just slammed shut,” she says. “Luckily, I was able to take some time off and hang out with my kid for a few months, and I was like, ‘well, this is nice.’”
With everything closed, Olsen and her daughter decided to go to Raymond to visit family. On a walk one day, Olsen saw that the beautiful white manor that had been built for Raymond’s founder, Jesse Knight, had been listed for sale. She had worked for a time as the head chef at The Restaurant at Lougheed House in Calgary – a landmark building now home to a museum, gardens and fine dining – and realized she could “do a mini-one” in Raymond at the historic house.
Her original idea was to create a 30-seat French restaurant. But the home’s location in a residential area limited possibilities – as did the renovations that would have been required to make the building fully accessible. The town of Raymond’s prohibition against the sale of liquor didn’t help her business plans either.
“I was going to have to gut the whole first floor, and I was like, how do I not wreck this 120-year-old home?” she recalls thinking. Then one day, when she had a fire inspector visit the house and he said it could not be open to the public, she asked about hosting private dinners. And he said that could work. “With COVID shutting everything down to like 10 people,” she remembers, “I decided to just do dinners on a smaller level, and people could bring their own beverages, too. It would literally be people having dinner in my dining room – like family dinner with a private chef.”
She opened in July 2021 to small groups, with word of the restaurant being shared by happy diners. “It was kind of slow moving to start,” Olsen recalls, “and then it just snowballed. I think I have four days still open this year.”
That’s how alumni Witzke, Novel and Candice Boldt and their partners came to be regulars at Eden Restaurant. Witzke came first with Jeremy Duchan, and they loved it. The next time they came, they brought Noble and Steve Szilagyi. And the next time they added Candice and Jack Boldt. All of them now come as often as they can get a reservation, and they love seeing the restaurant and house evolve over time. “When we first started coming here, she had six little white IKEA tables with a tablecloth over,” Noble says. “And all of that has changed. Every time we’ve come since she’s done another project, restored another window, or re-plastered another wall.”
Locals and guests have also donated antiques that fill the historic home – everything from a grandfather clock built in 1911 that originally stood in the home of a Pennsylvania governor, to the china and cutlery Olsen uses to serve her delicious meals. She also has plans to develop the garden to host more events in the future.
The scale and scope of the restaurant has been a great personal and professional fit for Olsen, as well as a sustainable one. With a limited number of guests and a reservation system in place, Olsen always knows exactly how much food to buy and prepare each day, so she has nearly eliminated food waste in her kitchen. She also enjoys the flexibility of cooking whatever inspires her and whatever is in season on a given day. While she will modify the menu for food allergies and sensitivities, the menu is otherwise a surprise for her guests.
Her regulars have come to enjoy that part of the experience, too. “It’s a little weird at first to go to a restaurant and not pick what you are going to eat, and yet everything is so perfectly done,” says Boldt, a co-owner of Lethbridge Hearing Centre. “It’s one of the best dining experiences around.”
Witzke agrees, adding “Kristy has the passion. You can just feel it.”
LAST COURSE
“In my family, food is how we say we love you,” Olsen says. “We don’t verbally say it. It’s just like – are you hungry? Have you eaten? That’s just how we show affection, and it’s still my love language.”
She feels that love when she calls her father, Jay Olsen, from the grocery store as she shops to ask for his ideas about some squid she was thinking of preparing later that evening. It’s in the pride in her eyes as Nohla helps clear a table or pour water for guests. Getting to spend more time with Nohla has been one of the best parts of the new business, she says, and she imagines she could keep running Eden Restaurant at least until Nohla finishes high school.
Olsen says she does miss being around the brigade in the kitchen and having people around to bounce ideas off of.
“But on the other hand,” she says, “it’s really nice that I am responsible for my own things. No one can screw things up aside from me – the buck stops with me!”
While she’s found a comfortable rhythm serving meals five nights a week, she is always “trying to figure out how to make this work better and work on my own skills.” That’s why she plans to take two weeks off every August to travel and work in a kitchen in another part of the world. And that’s the other reason she took the Baker Apprentice program this past year, as she says she wanted to expand and improve her breads, pastries and desserts.
Baking instructor Chef Amanda Kawchuk (Culinary Careers 2009, Cook Apprentice 2009) and three colleagues from the Culinary team booked a night with their partners to dine at Eden in April, and they were all impressed with the restaurant their graduate has created.
“It was awesome – a really neat experience,” says Kawchuk. “You go there with a small group of friends or family, and she just makes you feel at home. The historic house is so beautiful, and the food was delicious. She customizes your menu and everything is just so beautifully plated and tastes so good. She pays such close attention to detail – she’s meticulous. It was neat to go support one of our students in the industry – and a very fun night out for us chefs!”
Olsen says Eden Restaurant is as much about people as it is about food.
“I really want people to feel safe when they are here, to feel like family dinner, to feel like home,” she says. “I want people to have that place where the world stops existing when you visit. I love the people aspect of this work. I’ve made some amazing relationships with people who come in regularly, and they feel like friends and family. There’s always hugs and conversations, and it’s gotten to the point now where people just walk in and make themselves at home. It’s wonderful.”
