Christie Peters

Christie Peters, chef-owner of Primal in Saskatoon (SK), has a passion for acquiring culinary expertise internationally and bringing it back to the prairies. 

She first left home at 19 to enter the world of international modeling and, while living in Toronto, fell in love with the food scene. Working at Boston Pizza, she observed: “The power of the restaurant comes from the kitchen, so if I wanted to become a restaurateur, I would need to become a chef”.

Since her move to Vancouver, at 21, she has trained under several chefs and worked in the kitchens of De Kas in Amsterdam and Coi in San Francisco. In 2010, she opened her first restaurant, shortly followed by a second. Most recently, she completed a three-month internship at the world-famous Danish restaurant, Noma, under Chef René Redzepi.

As far-reaching as her quest for knowledge might be, her focus in her cuisine is on creating dishes that authentically represent the vast diversity of ingredients the Canadian prairies have to offer. Primal is known for creating dishes from locally grown Saskatchewan grains, using locally pastured meat and taking the idea of farm-to-table one step further by growing the produce they use in their own gardens. Every part of the vegetable is used, the compost goes back into the gardens, the leftover animal fat gets made into soap. The motto of her restaurant is “High Quality, Seasonal, Sustainable,” and these words are carried through every aspect of how the business is run.