As a child growing up in the affluent city of Los Altos, California, Eric Olson lived with his doctor father, television personality mother, a maid and a Mercedes-Benz in the garage. However, all school year long, he itched for those summer days when he could explore the Northern California woods with his great-aunts and uncles, cloistered naturalists who taught him the rudiments of foraging for indigenous edible and medicinal plants––an art they called, “wildcrafting.”

 

After joining the army and while stationed in Europe, he delighted in taking young women out on dates, showing off a flair for fine dining as learned from his father––a master in the art of good living. He experienced the best service of his life with one such woman who placed a wad of cash in the server’s palm before their meal. Shortly after, Olson decided to enroll in culinary school and further extended his training in 27 countries; even at their inception, his culinary pursuits flirted with the louche.

 

Though they’re a highlight of his resumé and certainly a gauge of his pedigree, the four years Olson spent as Executive Chef of the upscale Ojai Valley Inn & Spa were some of his least fulfilling, career-wise.

 

“I didn’t learn anything during the good times,” he says.

 

Olson, more interested in talking about what came after: working for a group of deep-pocketed, hippie idealists here in Cambria, who sought to change the world through food.

 

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.