Privet House replacing Acton's in Wolfville

By Mike Deibert

WOLFVILLE, NS—A restaurant that has been operating since the early 1990s in this town in the Annapolis Valley, home to Acadia University and artist Alex Colville, is getting new owners and a new name.

Acton’s Grill and Café will close July 14.

Its new owners, Jamie Smye and his wife Liisa Sellors, plan to re-open the establishment in the first half of August with the name Privet House Restaurant.

Smye told Restaurant News this week that they intend to do a small amount of upgrading and changing of decor in the 56-seat restaurant, where he will work in the kitchen while she handles the front of the house.

Next year they plan to add about 20 seats outside.

In an announcement of Privet House they describe the restaurant as offering “contemporary Canadian cuisine in a chic yest relaxed atmosphere…”

Smye said he will be doing local food with international touches, such as Nova Scotia fowl cooked up as Chinese barbecue duck rolls with five-spice seasoning and an Indonesian sauce.

Smye picked up experience doing multinational cooking when he worked at the Renaissance Fallsview Hotel in Niagara Falls, ON, a venue that hosted a lot of mixed marriages with menus that combined Canadian dishes with those of different ethnic origins.

“The entire menu is made to order, including all the desserts and fresh-made ice cream,” says the announcement of Privet House.

Owner/chef Drew Rudderham bought Acton’s in 2003 from its original proprietors, two Toronto restaurateurs who had moved to Nova Scotia, when they decided to retire.

Rudderham told Restaurant News that he was going back to Calgary where he previously worked because it is “much easier to run a restaurant where there are people with money.”

However, Smye commented that after running a restaurant on the west coast of Newfoundland, he and his wife could operate “on the moon.”

For four years, they ran Madison’s Grill in Corner Brook, NL. Smye said they were very successful, feeding doctors and other staff from western Newfoundland’s largest regional hospital, but the area’s isolation made the logistics of running the operations very difficult. Food had to be brought in by ferry.

They moved to Nova Scotia and said yes when Rudderham’s offered to sell them his restaurant.

In Ontario, Smye worked as executive chef and director of food and beverage for the Renaissance Fallsview, as well as director of operations for the Las Costa restaurant chain. While working for La Costa he met his wife who was also working for the company.