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Caroline Green, Cedar House Cafe & Restaurant

A funky, inviting dining experience, nestled in Golden, BC.

Caroline Green's adventure in cuisine started when she was a little girl, playing restaurant in the attic of the family garage. She started working in "real" restaurants when she was 14, and has worked in all aspects of the business since then.

In 1988 she moved to Whistler and worked with Umberto Menghi. "I started in the kitchen," she recalls, "took over as bar manager and went to Italy for the spring - to Umberto's cooking school / exclusive villa."

There, she set up olive oil tastings, organized weddings, set up a catering business and traveled as a personal cook for ski teams.

With all this background, it was natural for Caroline to want to open her own business. The Women's Enterprise Center helped with start-up funding.

"Cedar House Restaurant is a funky, casual but professional, dining experience," she says. "We are 80%+ organic. Our meats are hormone and steroid free, natural like my grandma's farm. All of our fish is wild and sustainable. I grow organically on our 10 acre property all summer. We have our own strawberry patch, raspberries, cherries, tons of edible flowers and herbs. We are supplied by Salt Spring Island Seed and Plant Sanctuary for our seeds, which I collect every fall and pass on to others. We are also supplied by local farmers and Genuine Organics, an organic delivery service a friend of mine started."

"The food is as clean and pure as we can get. My chef's are amazing. All the food is simple, with importance put on bringing out the flavours of the food, not trying to mask it with over the top sauces."

Cedar House is an old house which has been beautifully renovated. The atmosphere is romantic and inviting, and even the music is carefully chosen each night, based on the guests' dynamics and energy level. In the winter, there are candles everywhere; sit near a crackling fireplace and watch the snow fall through the lit-up trees. Or, sit at the bar and watch the chefs cook in the open kitchen.

The summer brings another treat. "In the summer guests eat outside on our deck, over-looking the Columbia River and the Purcell Mountains," says Caroline. "We have left the property very natural, we even have bears wandering through in the fall."

Where is this little patch of heaven? Cedar House is located six km south of Golden, one km off Highway 95, at the end of a short country lane. "Our greatest challenge to open up was to make people believe we could pull this project off," remembers Caroline. "People say we are in the middle of nowhere, yet 10,000 people found us in our first year."

A second challenge: opening while under-financed. "We had $200 to our names with all of our credit cards maxed," she says. "It was very stressful, and we opened 10 days after 9/11. Who knew what was going to happen in the world then?"

They persevered, and Caroline is happy in her "little restaurant in the woods". Cedar House is filled with natural art and photographs taken by Caroline's partner, Scott, a heliski and river guide. "He captures all the great outdoor activities of the area and gets people very excited about living in the mountains," says Caroline. "We are passionate about great food, wine and living as naturally as possible. I am here to plant seeds on how life should be lived and enjoyed."

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