Interview with Jessie Radies from the Blue Pear
Monday, April 14th, 2008“In Edmonton we are inundated with chains. It’s important to raise people’s awareness. Letting them know what their choices are, making it easy for them to make an independent restaurant a choice and then making sure that they are getting delivered a quality meal. If we can steer them in the direction of making sure they’re delivered quality when they expect it, they might be willing to try something new. I think the health of the community and city can be monitored by small businesses.”
-Jessie Radies
Jessie Radies began her career in the restaurant business as a Kentucky Fried Chicken Employee. Since her humble beginnings in the fast food sector, Jessie and her husband Darcy Radies opened Blue Pear, a boutique restaurant that offers a beautiful five course meal. Committed to the importance of supporting local businesses, Jessie has helped strengthen Edmonton’s Independent business scene by founding Original Fare and more recently Keep Edmonton Original.
1. When did you first become interested in the restaurant business?
It was totally by accident. My girlfriend wanted to work at a resort for the summer and she couldn’t drive, so I drove her. I was sixteen. While I was there, I figured that I may as well fill out an application too. The next day I got a call with a job offer in Waterton. It was a few hours away from my house, and I hadn’t even told my parents that I had applied for a job because I really didn’t think I�d get it. So I had the owner of KFC on the phone, offering me a position and I’m like, “Mom, can I go to Waterton and work for the summer?”
“A while ago I was talking to someone who had gone to culinary school, where they charge something like $20, 000 for tuition and I asked her, “Here’s a $20, 000 question, what are the four basic tastes?” She was taken aback. She got them eventually, but it really made her think. Sweet, sour, salty and bitter. These are key in cooking. You can teach a monkey how to cook from a recipe, but once you learn how to use the four basic tastes there is no going back.”
“Look at this picture. We’re really reinforcing this, ‘we are married thing.’ Actually, today someone called and said, “Is your wife there? I said, ‘I don’t have a wife, but you can speak to Jennifer.’”
“Before I met my wife Jessie, her and her best friend used to comically say after drinking, “Wouldn’t it be neat to have a place where we could work together? All that we would need is someone who could cook.” I was that missing piece. Jessie and I were both looking to meet someone and so I put my name is the paper. She got it in Sunday and looked up the name and gave the number a call. The interesting part about the whole thing is that we had lived two doors away from each other the whole time. I had never seen her before though.”
