Gypsum man brings ‘aloha’ flavor to town
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GYPSUM, Colorado – At first glance, swinging a hammer and a spatula wouldn’t seem to have much in common. But Danny Woolsey sees the similarities: If you start off knowing where you want to end up, you’ll succeed.
And Woolsey is hoping to succeed with his new business, Ekahi Grill and Catering, the first Hawaiian-style restaurant in the valley.
Woolsey, a native of Hawaii, knows quite a bit about both construction and food, but his cooking lessons came first. Woolsey’s grandfather first taught him and his siblings to cook the fish they’d caught.
“The way he’d cook, he’d know what every (ingredient) tastes like, then blend them together,” Woolsey said. That’s the approach Woolsey takes – he measures ingredients in his head and hands, not spoons and cups.
Even after coming to the valley to work in the construction business, Woolsey kept his hand in the kitchen. He does most of the cooking at home, and has for several years catered parties for clients, friends and his kids’ high school sports teams. He was known to send the Eagle Valley High School football team off on road trips will roll after roll of “musubi,” a sushi-like dish with rice, Spam, chicken and other ingredients wrapped in seaweed.
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But for years, construction paid the bills. Then, a couple of years ago, Woolsey’s clients had a hard time paying; then most of the work disappeared altogether.
So Woolsey decided he’d give cooking more attention. Thanks to some investment from family and friends – and a lot of labor from other friends in the construction business – Woolsey, along with his wife, Cheryle, just opened Ekahi Grill and Catering on Park Street. The restaurant serves the dishes Woolsey learned how to make growing up in Hawaii, and some he’s perfected in his years of cooking for catering clients.
In the process, Woolsey discovered in Gypsum something he thought he’d lost – an “aloha spirit” of friendship and people helping one another.
“I moved to the mainland 20 years ago – I couldn’t find a job there,” Woolsey said. “I thought Hawaii had kind of lost that aloha spirit then.”
But Woolsey had help from everyone from his new landlord to his friends in the plumbing and electrical businesses to get the old restaurant building cleaned up and ready for business.
When he and Cheryle put up the sign and clicked on the “open” sign, something else happened – people started coming through the door.
“We had 70 people that first day,” Woolsey said.
Ekahi – Hawaiian for “first” – was bustling for a recent Thursday visit, too. Town residents Rhett and Nancy Enlo were eating dinner that night, and said they’d be back.
It’s gratifying to hear, but Woolsey knows he’s got a lot of work ahead of him. Still, he’s already talking about the things he’d like to put on the menu in the weeks and months to come, especially “poke” (pronounced “poe-kay”), a raw fish dish that sounds something like a Hawaiian version of Mexican ceviche.
“I love seeing people taste different types of food,” Cheryle Woolsey said. “We’ll try to get some of those foods on the menu. But we’ll take it one day at a time for now.”
For now, though, Danny Woolsey is happy to be in the kitchen, and happy to spread a little aloha spirit of his own.
Business Editor Scott N. Miller can be reached at 970-748-2930 or smiller@vaildaily.com.
