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Get Stuffed

A conversation with Jack Evrensel:

For 24 years, Jack and his ideas have been quietly setting benchmarks in restaurant-land

Recently, you may have spotted a full-page ad in the Pique celebrating Araxi Restaurant. Once again, it had garnered top honours in Vancouver Magazine ’s annual restaurant awards. The ad celebrated key members of the Araxi team; typically, neither the owner, Jack Evrensel, nor his wife, Araxi, were even mentioned.

Halloween this year will mark the 24th anniversary of Araxi’s opening. Despite the key role the restaurant has played at Whistler, both as a literal and figurative cornerstone, Jack and Araxi have always maintained low profiles.

By contrast, some restaurateurs turn their eateries into showcases starring themselves – not that that’s a bad thing, just that it’s the antithesis of Jack and his restaurants (Araxi in Whistler and West, Blue Water and CinCin in Vancouver). There they go quietly about their business, serving up the type of food and warm, unobtrusive hospitality that generates customer delight and international accolades – praise from the likes of the London Times ; a plethora of four-star ratings; return engagements for the chefs at James Beard House in New York.

I’ve known Jack since he first opened Araxi (then called Salt & Pepper), when Whistler Village had barely roused itself from its previous incarnation as a garbage dump, and can attest to just how low he flies under the radar screen. The fact that he rarely grants interviews is all the more remarkable given the stature his restaurants have attained. So consider yourself lucky, as I did, to glean some of Jack’s stories and ideas right from the source in this first of a two-part conversation:

GB: You and Araxi came to Whistler from Montreal with your friends, Aline and Aram. What brought you here?

JE: We came out to Whistler to open a restaurant in Mountainside Lodge. It was going to be a Montreal-style crêperie called Crêperie Chez Moi. But they didn’t tell us that the building was a year late – they gave us a date and, naively, we showed up on time with a 44-foot trailer with all the furniture for the restaurant. We had to wait a year for the building to finish.

GB: So what were you doing at the time in Montreal?

JE: We were all friends in Montreal in our mid-20s. We are all Armenian, so we were part of the Armenian community. Aram was a basketball buddy of mine; Aline was a friend of Araxi’s for years.

JE: I was studying mechanical engineering at Concordia University. My father wanted me to be a mechanical engineer. But early on I knew that wasn’t my future. One of my mentors, a very successful mechanical engineer who was one of my teachers, drew up a plan of what I would be doing in 20 years. That was not appealing to me, knowing the future. It wasn’t exciting at all – I’d rather not know.

GB: So it wasn’t so much the plan as the fact that it was planned. You could see your destiny unfold.

JE: Right, and I couldn’t stand that. I was open to ideas and trying things. The idea was hatched to open a restaurant in a ski resort.

GB: Why skiing?

JE: It was a romantic idea. Aline and Aram had just come back from Aspen and we were in a club at three in the morning, talking. The idea was to ski during the day and work at night, and it wouldn’t seem like work, and then close the place up for the summer and go fishing.

We didn’t know about Whistler. Aram and I actually went to Banff to look for a restaurant space, but the town of Banff wasn’t appealing to me at all. When we came to Whistler, we had only one day left before getting back to Montreal.

There was no village at the time. What I fell in love with was actually a perspective drawing of the village – I remember it to this day. It was beautiful architecture. I remember the Fireplace Inns, with its distinctive roofline, and there was a hot air balloonist coming down the mountain. This picture was just beautiful – it was a 21st century village.

GB: So you saw something that was exciting here and wanted to come back to.

JE: Just the idea of what was going to happen in the village. We got in touch with the developers and that location [in Mountainside Lodge] was available for lease. After nine months we were back with our trailer. But you remember what a nightmare it was in Whistler. Nothing was on time.

There was nothing to do and everything to do. So we designed Going Nuts [a nut and chocolate shop]. In fact it was a 10-year-old girl, the daughter of a friend, who named it. We were all talking about the shop one day, and she said, you guys are going nuts.

GB: How did you see Going Nuts? Was it meant to be an interim step or a serious venture?

JE: I don’t think we saw it as anything – it was just something to do. One thing that’s been consistent with me is that I don’t think about the future.

GB: So you just do things that feel right – you follow your heart.

JE: Yeah, I mean, I love chocolate and nuts, so it was just something we thought we would enjoy doing while we were waiting for Mountainside to finish, which was taking longer and longer. Then this other location became available that used to be called Russell’s in the Blackcomb Lodge.

And Aram and I actually acquired the lease for that space as a partnership. We were going to open it together. In fact, we had a name chosen – Salt & Pepper – that came from another friend, who said we were like salt and pepper. So now we have two restaurants we haven’t opened and a nut shop where we are going nuts, and we decided to split up.

GB: What happened?

JE: A restaurant is very personal thing. By that time Aram and I had different visions of what things should be. With two operations available, it seemed like the natural way to go. He chose the crêperie and Going Nuts, and I had the Blackcomb Lodge location [eventually Araxi].

But unfortunately, things didn’t go well for him. He ended up going bankrupt after the first winter. They left Whistler and eventually got a divorce.

Next week: Inspiration and intrigue at work

Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning freelance writer who showed up for one of Araxi’s famous Halloween parties as a black widow spider.0