Meals for the memories: German restaurant opens Friday in Palmer

PALMER — The Colony Inn’s new tenant will bring an old-world style cuisine to the small, quaint kitchen.

J.D. Berry, who runs the latest addition to the Palmer restaurant scene, Edelweiss, will begin his stay in the building that formerly housed the dormitories for teachers who taught at the Mat-Su Borough building when it was the school house for the Matanuska Colony. Berry says the small kitchen in the southeast corner of the building fits perfectly, as traditional bavarian restaurants are in an inn or the homes of the restaurateurs.

Edelweiss will open on Friday at 11:00 a.m., at the Colony Inn and be open until 9:00 p.m. or later.

Berry started Edelweiss nearly two years ago, and has made appearances at a pop up restaurant around southcentral Alaska. Berry moved to Alaska in 1988 and decided to start up a restaurant that reminded him of the German home he grew up in.

“I kind of wanted that back. I guess we get older, and as we get older we get more nostalgic. I thought that was a natural thing to bring it about. The recipes that I use are pre-World War 1, so they’re actually very, very old ways of doing things,” Berry said.

Berry’s tastebuds harken back to a simpler time, growing up in a German household and longing for Frau Wolf’s Delicatessen. It was there that he fell in love with breakfast, more specifically, German breakfast. Berry’s first memory is at Frau Wolf’s, eating a weisswurst, a white breakfast sausage made of veal and pork and usually paired with a pretzel and a beer.

“If you had some German dish that you don’t even remember what it is, you tell me what it tasted like, tell me what was in it, and I will make it for you just so you can have that moment again,” Berry said.

Berry began the restaurant as the second iteration of his restless mind. Berry originally turned to graphic arts, but the humanity of his nostalgia in the kitchen and being able to connect directly with the hungry hearts he serves is something that helps him feel at peace in dealing with loss.

“This is a creative artistic outlet for me. It allows me to go back in time to a happier place in my life,” Berry said.

One of Berry’s twin sons passed away more than 10 years ago, and ever since then, he has been looking for a way to spend his energy.

“It’s a daily riveting experience. It’s not something that you get better or get over or something like that, so you’re always looking for something to hold on to in the midst of this tornado experience. So this is a really powerful outlet for me, actually creatively, it allows me to really express myself in a lot of ways and allows me to live in a time when my life was a little… When you’re a kid, your life is much simpler. So I get to use that nostalgia to help heal a little bit and to be a little happier,” Berry said.

Berry’s Bavarian old-world style cuisine will feature a variety of menu items that have not yet been revealed, but Berry said that the focus of Bavarian home-style cooking is game meat. Berry hopes for Edelweiss to become a community resource for those searching for traditional Bavarian food, a place to speak their native language, or just exchange recipes and try to find some soul in the old recipes. Berry said that the culinary environment of Germans is much like the no-nonsense, get it done demeanor. There is no German phrase like ‘Bon Appetit,’ but he compares two German phrases he hopes to hear inside his restaurant.

Berry plans to employ and teach members of the Alaska Job Corps Center his old-world recipes. He says he owes a lot to the Job Corps and wants to give back to the community. Berry hopes for the restaurant to become a community resource, and has no plans to change the location.

“Schmeckt gut,” Berry said, which means “it’s good.”