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DENINU KU'E/FORT RESOLUTION
Fort Resolution is getting a restaurant, something that has been absent from the community for years.

Toni Lafferty is the owner/operator of Ama's Kitchen, a new restaurant about to open in Fort Resolution. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

Toni Lafferty is in the process of opening Ama's Kitchen and she is excited by the business opportunity.

"I have big plans, big goals," she said.

Lafferty is confident the new restaurant will be a success, explaining it is a needed service in the community.

"There's no other place," she said, noting she is getting calls from people wondering when the restaurant will be open.

She is targeting April 19 for opening day.

The restaurant is in leased space attached to the DKDC Store – the former Stan's Quick Stop now owned by Deninu Ku'e Development Corporation.

Lafferty already briefly opened the restaurant on March 31 and April 1 during the Fort Resolution Spring Carnival and she was encouraged by the public's response.

"It was crazy. It was just packed in here," she said, noting the customers included community elders. "I really love to see the elders."

A lot of people told her they are happy for her, she noted. "And it really made me feel great."

Lafferty, 50, still has some work to do before permanently opening the restaurant, including installing four booths and seven tables.

She also has to set prices and determine the hours of operations for the business, which she said will be open seven days a week.

"I have to really sit down and think about this, but I'm the type of person that can keep going," she said, adding she plans to operate the restaurant herself with help from her daughters during busy times.

"I know I can do it," she said. "I've worked hard all my life. I mean 12 to 15 hours a day is nothing for me."

Plus, she said she loves baking and cooking, noting she started catering over the past year.

Lafferty, who also worked at the municipal office in Fort Resolution, has some experience in the restaurant business. In the past, she worked at a couple of different restaurants in Fort Resolution, including The Diner. That was the operation which filled her restaurant's current leased space until it closed a dozen years ago.

Since then, there was another smaller restaurant in the community, but that also closed.

The name of Lafferty's new restaurant is a tribute to her mother, Virginia Lafferty, who passed away early last year.

"Everybody called my mother, even myself, Ama," Lafferty said, explaining 'Ama' is the Chipewyan word for grandmother.

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