“This place has been around for like 40-50 years. It has been here forever. There’s tons of history.

This is the old Mellinville, from SCTV. SCTV was an old comedy show shot in Edmonton. The Red Ox Inn was called the Beef n’ Booze, in the show. John Candy was in the series. All those guys, Eugene Levy, Martin Short, Rick Moranis. It was like a Saturday Night Live thing.”

Frank Olsen gained ownership of the formerly known “Beef n’ Booze” ten years ago. He has been in the restaurant business for twenty years. Beginning as a doorman, he eventually worked his way up to become a restaurant owner. Today, the legacy of the Red Ox Inn continues through Frank and his wife Andrea.

1. What interested you about this particular kind of restaurant?

My wife worked here, for the person before this for 4-5 years. Then one day she came home and said that the previous owner was selling the restaurant. We were sort of young and naive and thought it would be fun to do that. It’s been good. It was really exciting. We rounded up some loot, and started doing it. We had to learn how to cook and run a business. The interest was that it was a manageable size and so we thought we could do it.

2. What makes your restaurant interesting/unique to other restaurants, chain restaurants in particular?

Oh everything. We’ve got good, loyal staff that has stayed with us for six to eight years. Also the food, the service, the room, the location and the music. I play music off of my ipod. We can program all the music, we can change our menu, adjusting it according to the season. Our wine list and menu we change on the fly. We’re not looking to please everyone like a chain would; we’re looking for middle ground. Our restaurant is run to try to please the people who like coming here. We’re about what we are. Not take it or leave it, but that’s what we’re doing and if you like that, that’s great.

3. What are the most significant joys and struggles of being an independent restaurant owner?

You can be your own boss. Supposedly you can do whatever you want, but that’s some of the problems too. You have to be the boss. The restaurant involves so many different things. What you see out in the restaurant should be fairly seamless, but what goes on behind it is a bit like running a house. We’ve got all kinds of supplies and suppliers. A lot of the chains will use one or two suppliers that bring in everything.

For us there is no head office feeding the answers all the time. That is part of the fun of doing it too, because it would be very boring for us if we kept being fed all the answers. Part of the fun is learning from mistakes and when you can see progress you know that is what you did. Our business has grown every year since we started, and it is neat to see. The recognition, having people stop you on the street, saying, “Oh I can’t believe you own that, we’ve been there!”�

Some of the struggle though is the time required. Everything takes time. We make everything from scratch. We start with good ingredients and we end up with good food. It can also be a struggle to see little of the family. My day starts at 9 or 10 in the morning, and it can go pretty late. We are open six days a week, so Monday, my kids know that one as the day dad is home. I get to skip out every now and then though too, because we’ve had enough staff now that it’s not nearly as much of an issue.

4. Is your family involved in the restaurant?

My wife and I initially started out together. She was the front end and I was the back end, in the kitchen. We went like that for four years. It was great because she had been working here before and so there was continuity with our customers. It really helped us in the beginning. Since my wife knew a huge chunk of the clientele, the transition was seamless at the front of the restaurant. We did that for quite a few years.

When we decided to have kids we made a decision that she would take care of the business as much as she could from home, while I would take care of it from this end. It is great because it is a little bit of a luxury to be able to have a parent at home. And she still contributes when she can to the business whenever she gets a spare minute. Which isn’t very often, especially with a 9 month old, a three year old and a six year old. The nice thing is that the kids come in here and they love it. My oldest comes in here and she wants to help. She wants to make everything and she loves the whole kitchen environment.

My kids and wife come in here for dinner sometimes, and also my parents and her parents come for dinner. My father in particular, gets puffy-chested, proud of the fact that this is his son’s restaurant. He really likes that.

5. How are you involved in the community? Do you support any charities, local and larger?

The whole big charity thing is mind-numbing in terms of who to choose to support. We do tend to support the local schools and local hockey teams though. We’ve also got our own family diseases that we try to support. Like Alzheimer’s and MS, heart and stroke. We also try to support our clientele that supports us. One customer started a foundation after his wife came down with ALS, Lou Garrett’s Disease, so we support that every year.

Then there’s the program to help rebuild the Strathcona Library. That’s a personal thing, because we’re all big readers. Then the public radio station, CKUA, we’ll support them in a different way. We try to support smaller, more independent things in town. We don’t have the head office
strategy for charities, which results in us supporting a lot of them. We try to keep supporting the same ones every year, and each year some are added.

6. Where do the ideas for your food come from? What is the inspiration behind the masterpieces?

My training in university was architecture and engineering. Buying the restaurant meant that I had to learn to cook. The initial part was from books and magazines, things that my wife and I liked. Before we had our kids we would try to make a food trip every year to California, Chicago. We tried to go and find out, do research while we were there and go all the way down the coast to Oregon, California, and San Francisco. Collecting ideas, trying out different food, getting exposed to stuff that’s not here in the city. We use a lot of books for ideas. I’m a bit of a book junkie. Also, magazines and ideas from our staff.

7. How large a role do ethics play in your choice of products? Do you buy locally/organically/fair trade?

We do try to buy locally, but it’s not always there. There is not a lot of local fish. There’s white fish and pickerel in Slave Lake and so when it is there we try to do that. I try to shop at the farmer’s market as much as I can, and being small, I can go to the farmer’s market on Saturday, pick up ten things and come and cook. I don’t have to feed thousands. I can go find things in the Farmer’s market especially when
it’s the right season. Unfortunately the season is way too short, but when it is there we definitely look for ingredients at the farmer’s market.

As much as we can, we build around what is available locally. Some friends of ours just bought the mushroom company in town. We’ve dealt with that company before, and now we’ll be able to deal with them even better. I’d love to be able to buy stuff within a 100-mile radius of the city. That being said, we’re pretty limited for a good portion of the year.

I love the idea of using majority local food. Executing it in a restaurant where you’ve got 200-300 people a week to serve, that’s a job for someone much braver than me. It’s a real struggle to keep up with that. We try to do some politically correct things. There’s a pork producer in Alberta and we try and support them. We try and funnel stuff that’s around here. And it’s great; the stuff that is local is great. It is way better than the stuff that’s getting trucked in from California
and Peru. It’s just not always possible.

We buy organic chicken and I’d love to buy organic beef if I could find a supplier. It just doesn’t make sense to truck organic food in from halfway across the world, because it uses more energy and that doesn’t make sense. I think that the local food angle is a much more solid foundation than whatever the government considers organic. I think that as long as the food has been taken care of, and hasn’t been sprayed to death. Even if it’s not necessarily organic.

I was born on a farm. It’s a tough business and the pressure is on the farmers to provide product at the right price. We’re completely willing to pay higher prices as long as it comes from the right place. For me it comes down to quality. Organic or non-organic, I don’t care as long as it’s quality. I’ve bought organic pineapple that just sucks, versus the commercially grown pineapple that is really good. Locally really makes the most sense.

8. Where does the restaurant’s name come from?

It is from a restaurant in Germany. The building is owned by a German couple. The name was brought in by one of the original guys, Rex McGill. This place has been around for like 40-50 years. We still get people coming in, asking, what happened to the blue vinyl thing? It used to be called the Burger Shack or the Burger barn. A crazy Scottish guy used to own it. The guy before us owned it for 15 years or so. It has been here forever.
There’s tons of history.

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