The Wild Olive expands with upscale dinner service

WASILLA — For many busy professionals who enjoy a good lunch on the go, The Wild Olive has been a hot spot.

Since its 2009 opening, the mom-and-pop place run by owners Tyren and DeeDee Torkelson has become known for its uniquely fresh deli sandwiches and creative wraps. That’s why many customers found themselves craving Wild Olive’s grub when the restaurant closed last September.

But the closure wasn’t another statistic generated by a tight economy. Over the course of seven months, the Torkelsons revamped the menu and re-opened with a renewed vigor in April with one major difference — The Wild Olive now boasts an upscale dinner service.

While the small eatery located at 2061 E. Palmer-Wasilla Highway still boasts a bustling lunch business, dinner was a logical expansion for a couple that has spend the better part of their adult lives in the restaurant business.

“I’ve been in the restaurant business a long time,” Tyren said. “I started at Red Robin in Anchorage in 1987 when they opened. I just waited tables, then did some poolside bartending in Hawaii. Wherever I went, I was a server. So was my wife. She’s been a waitress and bartender her whole life, and so have I.”

He also spent some time working in restaurants in San Diego, Calif., and the couple met through the business and married 11 years ago. It was about that time Tyren decided to run his own show, opening up Big Lake Thrift in 2000. It wasn’t long until he added a coffee shop, then some food service.

“We just kind of flowed into it over the years,” he said. “We started with a coffee shop inside the Big Lake Thrift store … and it just kind of grew from that.”

But it wasn’t until a couple years ago that the concept of opening their own full-service restaurant became more than a pipe dream. The name — Wild Olive — came from Fish Alaska magazine art director Linda Lockhart, who painted its distinctive sign.

“She helped us ramp up our menu and that started the ball rolling,” Tyren said. “Eventually, we found this place.”

Now, diners can enjoy upscale food without an overly pretentious atmosphere. Tyren’s, who’s also the head chef, said the concept of the dinner service isn’t speed or turning over tables. It’s allowing diners to savor their meals, enjoy some wine or beer, and linger as long as they like.

“It’s upscale dining, but you can wear shorts,” he said. “We have the dining room set up with china, napkins, lighting, art on the walls. It’s a very nice, upscale, comfortable setting, but you can walk in in a tank top and eat dinner.”

And what you’ll be eating is top-quality cuts of steak and plenty of fresh seafood, he said. One of the specialties at The Wild Olive is a pair of homemade sauces that can be mixed and matched on different varieties of fish or steak.

There’s the Pacific Rim sauce, a confetti-like mixture of julienned fresh vegetables sautéed in lemon with bay shrimp and scallops. There’s also the Delmar sauce, which is a hollandaise packed with crab and tiger prawn and served with asparagus.

“The Pacific Rim, for example, is good on the filet,” Tyren said. “It’s wonderful on the halibut. I like serving fish in a way that people know they’re getting fish and not overly decorated with a bunch of stuff. But the sauces put it over the top.”

You don’t have to take the chef’s word for it, either. Jan and Chris Soloy of Wasilla recently experienced The Wild Olive dinner service, and Jan was so impressed she emailed her friends.

“The food was very good and he makes all his own sauces,” she said. “The meat was cooked very well. The Ahi tuna my husband had was perfect, and the sauce was a different twist.”

She also liked the atmosphere, which is intimate with only six tables inside and another six on the patio.

“It’s a great place for girlfriends to go or for guys to go talk business,” Jan said. “We had been told about The Wild Olive about a year ago. I know it’s really popular for lunch, but I think the dinners will get more and more popular.”

Although lunches were going well, The Wild Olive needed to expand its hours and offerings, Tyren said.

“The way the economy’s going, we had to supplement the area for its full use,” he said.

Was he concerned that a loyal lunch clientele wouldn’t come back after a seven-month hiatus?

“No, we weren’t worried about that at all,” he said. “We have a really good following. And we’ve got more for dinner, too. In the nighttime, we’ve got Pacific isle fish and Alaska fish — crab, seafood, lobster, Mahi, Ahi, fresh Alaska salmon. We’re serving a dream menu.”

As a chef, the dinner service also allows Tyren to explore his talents in the kitchen and create more than sandwiches and wraps.

“It’s wonderful to make awesome food,” he said. “It is self-gratifying to throw out a platter that will delight somebody and make their evening.”

The Torkelsons did just that the other night with the Soloys, Jan said. She can still vividly remember her dessert of homemade ice cream melting under a shot of espresso with a rich chocolate sauce.

“Oh, that was really yummy,” she said. “And oh, their coffee is really good.”

Contact Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.

IF YOU GO

What: The Wild Olive restaurant

Where: 2061 E. Palmer-Wasilla Hwy.

Hours: Lunch, Monday through Sunday 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m; Dinner, Tuesday through Saturday 5 to 9 p.m.

Contact: (907) 376-4430