Antoinette’s Restaurant, like many of their Yukon peers, had to figure out a new course of action. After giving it some thought, they decided they would work through the pandemic by providing their fellow Yukoners with frozen meals so they could stock their freezers and enjoy the dishes when they wanted.

“There is this restaurant in Ottawa called the Red Door,” explained Antoinette Green-Oliph, owner of Antoinette’s Restaurant, “they only do frozen meals – people would come by to pick up a couple of meals for the week, and I always thought that it would be fun to do something similar in Yukon.”

She added, “When COVID hit, a neighbor suggested that I should do frozen meals, and I thought, well that’s two of us who like the idea of take-out frozen meals, so maybe there’s some hope that we can keep this going.”

Green-Oliph and her partner Inga sat down and mapped out how it could work and came up with a plan.

Owner and chef Antoinette Green-Oliph prepares a dish for take out in the kitchen of her restaurant in downtown Whitehorse.

“I plan the week’s menu and then over the weekend we post it online to Facebook and the website,” Green-Oliph explained, “Customers pre-order and pre-pay before Tuesday at 5 pm and then we prepare the orders for pick-up on Thursday between 4 – 6 pm. We have it set up so that we can just pass them their order in a bag through our pick-up window.”

“I think it’s helping people to get away from their own cooking,” Green-Oliph said, “People who don’t usually cook for themselves are having to do a lot of their own cooking at the moment and I think they’re getting a bit bored.”

The menus to date have featured such delicacies as polenta lasagna, macaroni pie, kangaroo empanadas, pork tenderloin, snapper, southern fried chicken and vegetable pakoras. They will be offering a special fresh three-course dinner menu for Mother’s Day with the choice of five different mains.

A friend’s husband who works for Air North offered to start delivering meals to Dawson for them, so that Dawsonites can get in on the frozen meal action. Soon after that, Mac’s Fireweed got in touch with Green-Oliph and offered to carry her frozen meals in their ice cream freezer in the front of the store so people who missed the boat on that week’s order deadline could still get their hands on some delicious food. Both partnerships are working very well.

“I’m so grateful to the Yukon community,” said Green-Oliph, “It’s going well so far and I really appreciate the support.”

She added, “We have regulars already for our weekly pick-up. One person has come every week so far and said to us the other day ‘thank you for saving me from my cooking’.”

Green-Oliph had one other thank you to add: “I’m so grateful to Inga. She has been such a rock through all of this. This work is completely out of her realm, but she’s been in there helping me with every step. I’m going to cry, she’s so good to me and I couldn’t do this without her.”

You can check out Antoinette’s Restaurant’s website to learn about this week’s menu: https://www.antoinettesrestaurant.com

 

 

Cooking up some good

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