SASKATOONEXPRESS - May 7-13, 2018 - Page 1
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Volume 17, Issue 18, Week of May 7, 2018
Top 100 x 2 City restaurateurs receive national recognition
Joanne Paulson Saskatoon Express here was no sign of a restaurant critic. Just like in the movies, someone must have slipped in, checked it out, and slipped away incognito . . . at least twice. Because last month, not one but both Saskatoon eateries owned by Christie Peters and Kyle Michael appeared on Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants list: The Hollows and Primal. “I had no idea,” said Peters in a recent interview. “I know they have many judges across Canada voting. I knew the list was coming out, but I didn’t think enough people knew about us nationally that we’d be able to be recognized on the list. “But last year, I called it my year of ‘yes.’ I did everything and anything that came across my desk. I did a lot of travelling, a lot of collaboration dinners, I did a lot of TV things. I met so many chefs and networked so much, I think we spread out and got to be a little more well-known. That could have had something to do with it.” The partners in cooking and life opened The Hollows in 2011 and Primal three years ago. “They say the first two years are the hardest, then they say the first five years are the hardest, and we’re past that so I think we’re going to be OK,” Peters said with a laugh. She travelled and learned how to cook in Vancouver, San Francisco, Amsterdam and Spain, always knowing she wanted to return
T
CT050701 Carol
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Christie Peters (pictured) and Kyle Michael own The Hollows and Primal. (Photo by Joanne Paulson) to her home town, and open a restaurant here. “All my cooking colleagues in Vancouver thought I was crazy . . . they don’t know what goes on in Saskatoon. It’s the land of opportunity in Saskatoon.” She met Michael in Vancouver. “We became best friends and years later ended up getting together. I convinced him to move here with me. I told him it’s the land of opportunity; we can open a restaurant without investors, we can buy a house, we can do all these things you can’t do in the bigger cities. “He fell in love with it right away.” Still, it took a while to get some traction. They looked for a building for a year, including the Golden Dragon site; but at first, they didn’t consider it because it was
so big. They wanted something they could run on their own. “After not much luck finding anything, we talked to the family that owns this building and when we walked in it was kind of like a time capsule from the ’60s,” said Peters. “It had everything we needed to start a restaurant — it already had tables and chairs and cutlery and plates and glassware and kitchen equipment. It was basically a turnkey operation. We thought it was a cool thing and a cool space, a space unlike anything they have in bigger cities nowadays. All the spaces like this have been redone.” But the home of The Hollows has essentially not changed since the days of the Golden Dragon. It remains vintage, in an up and coming neighbourhood that people
once warned Peters away from. Having cooked at some fine dining spots in Vancouver’s Gastown, near needle exchanges and homeless shelters, “such a colourful neighbourhood,” she was undaunted. “This area kind of reminded me of Gastown, and I thought it would regenerate. Because it is right by the river, right by downtown, close to Broadway; but a lot of people thought we were crazy and this was a bad location. But we thought it was great. Everything just kind of took off from there. “When people from out of town come to visit, this is the building that blows them away. This space is crazy, so vintage, everything from the wood panelling to the Chinese Tiki Bar to the old lanterns.” (Continued on page 13)
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