More than a restaurant, Centrally Grown was conceived as a utopian compound that served foods bearing any number of alt-modifiers (e.g., vegan, grass-fed, organic, raw and gluten-free, etc.), dishes like raw seaweed salad, whole wheat pizza with wild nettles and local kale lemonade. During Olson's four years there, his main task was to research, build and manage a massive food truck for Centrally Grown, a project both fascinating and doomed to fail. Painted top-to-bottom in psychedelic murals depicting the coastline, Olson’s brand new 42-foot mobile kitchen commanded attention when it drove by, which was precisely the idea.
Centrally Grown wasn’t zoned to host a food truck, so, in a decidedly Machiavellian move, Olson licensed it with the nearby state prison so that the county couldn’t meddle.
“We did weddings on the beach without a permit,” Olson says, grinning. “If anyone called to ask questions, the prison wouldn’t release anything because…it’s a prison.”
Their only requirement was that the mobile kitchen serves lunch to the guards on duty, which Olson and his team regularly did.
While driving to events, Olson often pulled over to teach his staff how to forage. For all its optimism, though, Centrally Grown didn’t last. Guests’ dogs peed on the edibles planted in the restaurant’s parking lot, unaware they were intended for kitchen use. Drugs addled the staff. They dropped reservations, filled orders incorrectly. The freewheeling food truck lifestyle caught up with the fifty-something Olson, too. “I was in an old man’s body playing a young man’s sport,” he says. “I had to get out.”
What seemed like a detour on Olson’s career highway crystallized his values, however. In keeping with his passion for learning, he set out to study the age-old craft of distilling by attending schools in Texas, Utah, California, Washington, and Kentucky. He now brings his birthright of wildcrafting to bear through the art of distillation.
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