By Katharine Sandiford From a bakery run out of their Marsh Lake home to the legacy of the Main Street Backerei, a quaint grocery store and café, a catering business, and now their latest and most ambitious project, the launch of Henriette’s Tavern, Mathias Lexow and Jonathon Peterson have long impressed Yukoners with an unprecedented standard of excellence.

It was the first time I’d ever seen caterers receive a standing ovation. All 90 people attending Elizabeth May’s Green Party fundraiser in Whitehorse dropped their forks and leapt to their feet to clap and cheer – and even holler – to express their dining satisfaction. It was true, the food was out-of-this-world: jerk-encrusted organic chicken, fresh greens tossed in a savory-sweet ginger dressing, roasted local root vegetables that were caramelized, crunchy and bursting with flavour, and then a nut-crust berry torte with perfect pastry topping to take your salivary glands to new levels of hyper-stimulation. Head bowed, shoulders slouched in humility, a cautious Jonathon Peterson emerged from the back of the room, nodded his head a few times, waved, and then quickly scooted back into the kitchen.

The praise was due, and not just because of the fantastic flavours. After discovering the facility’s kitchen was locked – and could not be opened – Peterson and his crew cooked the entire meal using four barbecues. They served it hot, on time, and without a single glitch.

This is not the first time Peterson and his partner Mathias Lexow have awed their Yukon customers with their service, quality and fresh flavours. They’ve been doing it consistently for over 10 years, serving scrumptious all-organic meals and baked goods out of a variety of fashionable cafés, shops and restaurants they’ve owned and operated with unwavering devotion and innovation since they immigrated (Peterson from the U.S. and Lexow from Germany) to Canada in 1997.

“Dedication, hard work and always success,” says Peterson. “We make sure the quality is always 100 per cent.” They’ve been known to work 16 hours a day, seven days a week, for four years straight. And perhaps more than anything else, they have exhibited true entrepreneurial spirit. They’ve taken serious risks, evolved their businesses, launched innovative new projects, and have constantly, tirelessly, strived to improve their products, their service, their vision, and their role as leaders in the organic food movement. Plus, they seem to have mastered how to take care of themselves, too, no small feat in an industry rife with stress and self-sacrifice.

Even though they were both barely 30-years old, Lexow and Peterson were ready to retire when they bought their Marsh Lake property, a scenic cottage hamlet 70 kilometres south of Whitehorse, in 1997. Lexow left a hectic life in northern Germany, where he had built a successful chain of pet stores near Hamburg, beginning when he was 18. He sold his businesses and moved to the Yukon, seeking a more tranquil, slower-paced life in the wilderness. Peterson, too, was ready to slow down. Trained at the world-famous Culinary Institute of America at Rhode Island, then as a professional engineer, Peterson had been working as both a chef and an engineer – often at the same time – non-stop since his late teens. He even spent four years as an aquatic sound engineer on submarines with the U.S. Navy – and to the delight of his comrades, completed a tour as the cook in the submarine’s kitchen. “My father always said, ‘You have to do the best. You can’t stop. You have to keep going,’” says Peterson. “It’s both fortunate and unfortunate that Mathias and I were both raised with a very solid work ethic.” It doesn’t matter how hard they’ve tried to put on the brakes, they simply can’t. The drive to succeed is bred in their bones.

They met while travelling through Skagway, Alaska in 1997. They recognized their deep compatibility, fell in love, and let destiny takes its course. The next year, they built their dream house in Marsh Lake. Complete with turrets, elevated walkways, atriums and angular metal roofing, it’s worthy of a photo spread in Architectural Digest. Although they were “ready to retire,” Lexow was obligated to open a business within two years of settling in Canada as a condition of his immigration program. Their solution: a slow-paced European bakery based out of their home.

Baking is Lexow’s first love, even before pets. “I have been baking since I was six-years-old, before I could reach the countertops” he says, in his thick German accent, recounting the daily loaves, pastries and scones he’d make for his family. “It’s fun. You see flour and sugar, you make something out of it and you can make someone happy.” With Peterson’s culinary expertise and Lexow’s ingrained skill as a traditional European baker, they opened their tiny shop, happily expecting to serve only a small percentage of the 400 odd residents in the area with tasty soup and fresh bread. “We even did a business plan,” says Peterson. “It said this was not supposed to be successful at all.”

But business unexpectedly blossomed. Before long, they were flooded with customers, many of whom were driving 45 minutes down the Alaska Highway from Whitehorse to experience their extraordinary cooking and baking. “The peace only lasted six months, we were so absolutely busy,” says Peterson. “It was just insane on the weekends.” A loyal Whitehorse customer urged them to expand and lured them into a building he owned downtown. And so, in 2000, they reluctantly opened a bakery in historic Harwood’s Mall, in a spacious, south-facing, ground-level unit right on the corner of Whitehorse’s high-profile Main Street and First Avenue. “He gave us everything we wanted,” says Peterson, “so we said, ‘Fine, we will do this.’” Very quickly, the Main Street Backerei became the best place in town to eat lunch or sit down for a coffee and muffin. Famous for their soups (Peterson’s speciality) and their scones and pastries (Lexow’s), the place developed a loyal clientele, all of whom quickly learned to correctly pronounce the shop’s name: BACK-ER-IYE – because it was not just any old bakery after all.

Lexow is so particular about his baking methods, with everything made from scratch, by hand, using fresh-milled organic flours and fresh-churned butters, and following an exacting, almost scientific procedure, that it was nearly impossible to hire bakers to take over his job in the kitchen. They would spend months training young inductees only to lose them a year later. “Good enough is never good enough for me,” says Lexow. Most places use frozen pre-made dough or ready-bake goods from the wholesaler that give the appearance of fresh baking, “but they have so many additives, hydrogenated fats, artificial butter aroma, which is just very bad for the human body,” he says. “And I mean, you can taste it.” At the Main Street Backerei, no matter how busy they were, everything from their prize scones to the custards, ganache, croissants and Danish puff pastry was made by Lexow, even if it meant starting work at 4 a.m.. Peterson too, would work alongside his partner in the early morning, painstakingly preparing exotic gourmet soups, curries and salads.

Seven years after opening, with a catering offshoot booming and business at the height of success, they sold the Main Street Backerei. “It became hell,” says Peterson. “It became high-end fast-food, which is not a recommended combination.” Stress was taking a toll. They had just worked four years straight, 16 hours a day, without taking a break. “We sold it because of our health,” he says. “We had to look very closely at a few close friends that were dying of cancer. We had to look very closely at our stress levels.” They passed the business on, at a handsome profit, to new owners who now call it Baked Café. It’s doing well, too, despite the absence of Lexow and Peterson’s kitchen handiwork, appealing to a more mainstream coffee crowd.

In 2007, after a few months off to travel in Europe and engage in nutritional cleanses, Lexow and Peterson opened a new business called Real Foods. It’s part grocery store, part café and part bakery, and is in the suburb of Porter Creek, a good 10 minutes away from downtown Whitehorse and its demanding line-ups. In one corner, a few shelves are stocked with organic and wholesome items like spelt flour, agave nectar, fresh ground spices. Lunchtime customers seat themselves at an assortment of dark-stained wood tables overlooking forests and snow-capped mountains. At first, there were quiet lulls in the day, giving the pair a chance to slow down and prepare for the next wave of after-work shoppers. “I actually read books in the afternoon,” laughs Peterson.

The peace didn’t last long. More and more people worked a stop at the Real Foods shop into their routines and beforelong, the grocery store shelves were pulled away to make room for more tables. Resembling a slightly smaller, more laid back Main Street Backerei, Real Foods today is a direct response to the needs of their devoted clientele. Ironically, Peterson and Lexow couldn’t handle the slower pace. “It became a little bit boring,” recounts Peterson. “We were quickly led back down the path of full-time cooking and baking.”

This summer, they purchased a prime piece of downtown real estate, a one-story building covering most of the short city block along Fourth Avenue between Steele Street and Wood Street, with the intention of converting it into a downtown dining and entertainment hotspot. Simultaneously, they put Real Foods up for sale. They’ve received a serious offer from an ex-employee, “the only one who really grasped the baking methods,” says Peterson.

The new building has history. It was the first laundromat in town, owned by African-American gold rush legend Lucille Hunter until the 1970s. Later it was home to the long-lived and much-loved No Pop Soda Shop diner, then the high-end La Gourmandise restaurant. This January, Peterson and Lexow will have completed renovations to the two main units, including new vaulted ceilings, a wooden bar, furnishings and a pool table. Lexow and Peterson are also antique and art collectors, design and style junkies, and are enjoying dressing up the new tavern to suit their tastes. And like all their businesses, there’s great music playing, always a little louder than you’d find elsewhere, and usually something obscure – indie, moody or with a slow, heavy beat. It’s a full experience. Customer’s senses are stimulated by the art, the decor, the music, the food and the smells. “We’ve found our niche,” says Lexow. “There’s a need in Whitehorse for good, healthy food, good customer service, an interesting environment, something different, something new.”

Henriette’s Tavern – named after Lexow’s totally hip, young-at-heart grandmother – will occupy the entire building once renovations are complete and another shop relocates. Although they plan a New Year’s Eve grand opening, they’ve been operating a restaurant and catering business since June, out of the smaller middle unit, now called Henriette’s Real Food Restaurant. The whole complex will consist of three separate spaces – a cocktail lounge and dance floor, a classic pub, and the sit-down family restaurant – connected to each other by doorways. In the summer, a back deck called “the biergarten” will offer mugs of beer and German sausage. “We’ll bake and cook, but we’ll have someone else in charge of the kitchen full time,” says Peterson. “We want to do a lot more hosting.” They’ve signed up for the federal immigrant entrepreneur program, hoping new staff will arrive soon.

Their five-employee base is expected to double, if not triple over the next year. At the peak of business at the Main Street Backerei, they were a team of 12. “It’s all about the employees,” says Peterson. “The people we have with us now have been with us for eight years. Some went away to school but they came back. They’re like our own children. You take care of them.” They boast higher than average pay, a mentorship-type learning environment, and respect and understanding – provided you’ve got a killer work ethic.

Despite their shameless perfectionism, the pair is learning to hand over the reigns to their employees. They force themselves to go on a European vacation every year, leaving the business to their staff so they can recoup and relax. They also set new rules for themselves. They may still work 16-hour days, but they’ll always take Sundays off to enjoy their home at Marsh Lake, to walk their dogs and do a little prep work. For many years they were feeding healthy food to their customers without taking the time to enjoy it themselves. “We have learned to set boundaries, especially with health and eating,” says Peterson. “Everyday, we sit down and eat a healthy breakfast, eat a shake at lunch and then at dinner, we sit down again, eat something great, discuss the day. We didn’t always do this in the past.”

Two years into the Main Street Backerei, they made the full switch to organic. “It almost broke us,” says Peterson, recounting two years of financial struggle. “But if I’m feeding someone, I want to make sure I’m not killing them.” As much as they can, they get their produce, dairy, meat and eggs from the Yukon’s organic farms. The rest is from the Superstore, ordered up from Vancouver or imported from California. Surprisingly, their prices are reasonable, and comparable with the non-organic eateries in town. Twelve dollars will get you an unforgettable lunch: spicy, juicy goat roti (an homage to Peterson’s Barbados birthplace) with spelt salad, an open-faced gravy-smothered hot Tuscan pork sandwich with a giant bowl of roasted spice soup, or some other mind-blowing combination of flavours and textures.

In true entrepreneur fashion, the duo already have expansion plans for the future. They’re designing a second story on their downtown building so they can open a small, fashionable guest house to complement the Henriette’s complex. “There’s nowhere downtown where you can get a cozy room and sit out in the sun on a rooftop garden,” says Peterson. And just recently, they purchased a gold-rush era historic hotel in tiny Atlin B.C., two hours south of Whitehorse. They’ve already started renovating it, discovering mahogany beams and ornate features under layers of paint and wallpaper. In a few years, they will open a little inn.

Eat a bowl of their soup and expand your mind. Spend an hour in their company and you’ll feel like anything is possible. Lexow and Peterson are true-blue entrepreneurs: brains wired with ideas, hearts swollen with passion and bodies coursing with endless energy. “It’s not the business or financial side that drives us,” says Peterson. “It’s seizing the opportunity to be entrepreneurs, to try something new, to continue along on our adventure. And thankfully, the customers follow.”