09/24/2026
Our Story
The most common question we get asked at the Kitchen is "What brought you to Kansas?" and after telling people our story, many have said we need to write it down. So I did. Itâs a bit long, but I hope you enjoy learning a bit more about where we came from and who we are.
-The Accident-
It was Spring of 2017, I had just been offered a great job on the Las Vegas strip at one of the famous buffets, with a 300% pay raise. I contemplated my decision for merely a second before responding: âAh, No thank you.â
We had a 2nd kid on the way and sure the pay raise would be nice, but Vegas was no place to raise a family. I was NOT going back to working evenings and weekends. I wanted to be present in my daughter's lives, and cooking jobs rarely give weekends or evenings off. Nike World Headquarter was a dream job. Weekends and evenings off. Unlimited food budget. Top of the line equipment. And creative freedom. Declining the Vegas job was the easiest decision I made that day.
Little did I know, God was about to give me all the time with my daughters that I could ask for.
Two months after I declined the job offer in Sin City, and 3 months after announcing the arrival of our second daughter.. I found myself laying in a hospital bed, struggling to breathe while a doctor explained the grim news.
It would take 1 year of Physical Therapy, before I could walk without assistance. The extensive nerve damage in my back, hips, and legs was permanent. And I had severe osteoarthritis. Long term, there was little I could do about the pain. Loosing weight would take strain off joints and lessen the pain, but the pain was a permanent part of life now.
I was devastated. At 31 years old my childhood dream of being a Chef exploded 10 seconds after takeoff and I could no longer provide for my wife and children. As the doctor outlined the recovery timeline with Physical Therapy, one thing he said rang like a gong in my ear.. âLift no more than 5 pounds for the first year, after 5 years, I should be able to lift 50 poundsâ All I could think about was the fact my 7 y.o daughter was already over 50 pounds... Which meant I could never hold her in my arms again. And a quote came to mind.
âAnd then one day, you will pick up your child for the very last time, without ever realizing it will be the last. And you will realize all too late that you should have cherished that last moment a little longer. As the last fleeting moment of childhood is surely found when we were last carried to bed, safe in a parents arms.â
I realized I could no longer pick up my daughter.. I could accept loosing my dreams. But the thought of my girls loosing their father in that way, was unacceptable.
-The Lifestyle Change-
Together, Elsbeth and I made a drastic lifestyle change. Daily Yoga got me walking unassisted in just 2 months. I couldn't work as a Chef, but I could be a Dad-Chef. So I designed a dietary plan for my family. I cooked healthy, nutritional, affordable dinners, and desserts. We cut almost all processed foods out of our diet and over the next year, we lost a combined 200 pounds.
In that 1st year I spent 550 hours doing Yoga and PT. Every hour of it hurt, and more than a few times I thought to give up on recovery altogether as the pain was too much to bare. Yet every time I lay there wanting to quit, I would remember the day I became a father, the day I got to hold my little girl for the first time, and the day I realized my life was no longer about me anymore. And I pushed on.
1 year after the injury, I held both my girls in my arms for the first time.
Though the last year had not been so kind to Elsbeth. She steered our family threw the hurricane like a ship without a captain. At 2-months pregnant, she began picking up extra shifts to make up some of my lost income.. She attended Technical Collage during the day graduating with a 4.0GPA. At night, she worked to support her family. What little free time was consumed with caring for me, our daughter, cooking, chores, and more. Over that year she sacrificed more for her family than I knew she had to give. Just 5 days after giving birth to Trinity, she was back at work to finish her externship and provide. âThrew sicknessâ had arrived much earlier for us than she thought it would. But nevertheless, she persisted. And the struggles tempered our marriage like the fire tempers steel.
It took 12 months for us to rebuild our shattered lives. At this point we were living with my family and dependent on welfare and food stamps. Elsbethâs new degree earned her a heftier income though it wasnât near as much as when we both worked, AND we had a newborn. As my Yoga and PT paid off I slowly regained some physical capability and stepped into my new role as a âStay At Home Dadâ to two daughters.
I began to look for cheaper food sources. Free preferable. Elsbeth loves Blueberries. Blueberries grew in Oregon. So I called the farm on the package in the grocery store. I had no idea what I was trying to ask, and after a very awkward conversation with a very patient farmer, he realized I was asking to glean his Blueberry Field. Glean: to gather the leftovers of a crop after the main harvest has been collected. Nobody had asked about Gleaning in decades, but as long as we were respectful we had permission to glean 8 acres of mature blueberry bushes during a 1 week period. Free Food. Thats the best price possible.
On Monday I went to investigate the farms potential. Tuesday I returned with my entire family and together we harvested 300 pounds of the best Blueberries any of us had ever eaten... We repeated the process with a dozen different farms, and a dozen different crops and every crop was prime quality. We quickly realized to get the quality of food we wanted, we had to go directly to the farmer or grow it ourselves. The next spring, we started a garden, and gardening became a new form of Physical Therapy. Gardens need fertilizer. So we started composting. Composting needs organic material, So that fall we started raising Meat ducks.
-The Recovery-
3 years after loosing my career, our lives were unrecognizable. Combined, we had lost 350+ pounds, more than halving our body weight. 80% of our diets were now sourced from local farms or our own garden. We learned to Can, pickle and preserve Jam, Meat and Eggs for winter. By now we were harvesting 2,000 pounds of food per year and our motto had become âHow did they do it before electricity?â So we learned âOld Worldâ skills to preserve our food through the year.
By year 3 we got so good at being frugal we began saving up a little money. We had managed to reduce our expenses more than enough to compensate for the loss of income and we began thinking we could buy a house. It was unlikely that I could ever work again. but thanks to 3 straight years of work, I had recovered physically. but the nerve damage still caused daily pain. Some days I was able to get around and do chores, some days I could hardly move. The unpredictability of the pain made working a regular job near impossible, but I could work around the pain on my own schedule to gleen, garden, and raise animals.
For the last few years, we had been dreaming of building our own Homestead. We had looked across the Pacific Northwest, but property was expensive and we no longer fit into the political culture of Oregon. So we began looking elsewhere and quickly settled on the Midwest. I spent my childhood summers in the Midwest with my grandfather, a traveling businessman, and had always loved it here. So we began hunting for a small town in the middle of nowhere with no major highways running threw. And as we told friends about our search, one replied âCheck out Herington."
He had recently moved from LA to Herington for much the same reasons we were looking to leave. We researched the town and it seemed a perfect fit. We wanted somewhere we could use our time and skills to contribute to the local community and plant generational roots. So I flew out to Kansas alone, and after just 3 days I made an offer on a house.
-The Move-
In the Fall of 2021, we loaded up our kids, cats, ducks, and houseplants, said goodbye to our family, and proceeded to drive 2,300 miles across the country to a home only I had seen. We really had no clue what life would have in store for us here. (Good lord you're still reading?! Well, on with ya then.) We had to build entire new social networks, find new farms to Gleen, and learn to garden in a whole new climate. We moved a mountain of compost to our new joint-garden, one shovel at a time.
Since arriving, people had suggested that, being a Chef, I should open a restaurant. While the idea was intriguing, we sorely lacked the financial capability to think about doing so. Plus, I had always sworn I would never open a restaurant. The hours are horrid, profit margins almost nonexistent, and Hospitality is a fickle industry. Yet our own plans continued to meet obstacle after obstacle, until finally we had but one option left to provide for our family: look into the restaurant at the airport, rumoured to be fully furnished.
It wasnât quite fully furnished, but it had just enough.. and with a lot of help from friends, family, and the town, we were able to aquire the few pieces of equipment we needed to make it a proper, respectable kitchen. After 7 months of deep cleaning and refurbishing our credit cards were maxed out, but we were able to open!
Itâs been terrifying, some days I feel like a horrible weight in my stomach, like I am gambling with the future of my children, after all 90% of restaurants close within 5 years. I wonder if I am physically capable of working and what would happen if my back relapsed.. But, give your worries unto God, and trust in his plan.
It's been a year and a half now, and we're surviving! It's been rough, we scrape the bottom of the barrel every week to pay off debts, yet somehow God brings us customers, and its always JUST enough to keep going. Yet when I surrendered to Godâs plan and went with the flow.. I got everything I ever needed. I get to serve my community. I get to do it with the love of my life. For the first time I have a job where I can cook for my family, and hold my head up with pride.
We may still be struggling to pay bills, but I truly feel blessed and thankful everyday for the opportunity I thought I had lost. The opportunity to work and provide for my family. And even threw the struggles, not once have I regretted saying to to Vegas.
The nerve pain never did get any better. Daily yoga, and PT is still required or I quickly learn a painfull lesson about why I do them. Over the last 8 years I have come to accept the pain. I can be at home sitting in pain, or I can be doing what I love, serving others while not letting the pain control my life.
And that's LONG story of what led us here to this paradoxical little restaurant in the middle of nowhere that is simply a reflection of who we are. We get to invite our friends and neighbors over for dinner weekly, our hobbies became the decor, and our restaurant, became our Kitchen. And if you read this far, you deserve a discount on your next order.
Thank you to all of our dedicated customers for helping make our dreams come true.
