Chefs found love, purpose and a future through their time at school
With all its demands, starting a restaurant isn’t a typical choice for those wanting a life and family together. But that’s how Heena and Michael Mak – both Culinary Arts ’14 grads who met at NAIT – saw the endeavour when they started Edmonton’s Brown Butter Café in 2017.
They’d like to help students see that flexibility, too.
The Maks will get their chance as the first chefs in the 2025-26 Alumni Series at Ernest’s, NAIT’s on-campus fine-dining restaurant. The program features six public dinners, from Sept. 19 through Feb. 27, 2026, each hosted by NAIT-graduated chefs.
The first series launched last September as an opportunity for students to learn directly from local industry innovators and leaders, and to offer the public unique and delicious dining experiences. Every evening sold out.
With their event nearly sold out as well, the Maks are eager to share what they’ve learned from approaching the business on their own terms, and excited to table a wine-paired menu that includes the likes of scallop with squash purée and crispy leak, pork with mushroom risotto, and more.
“We can't wait to be in those kitchens again,” says Heena. “I think it'll bring back a lot of good memories. Those two years [of school], if we could do it again, we would in a heartbeat.”
The six chefs of the 2025-26 Alumni Series Dinners
As part of the fun, Ernest’s will reveal the next chef in the Alumni Series wine-paired dinners after each event concludes. But the group is guaranteed to feature a wide range of culinary styles and expertise – and its members will all be graduates of NAIT culinary programs.
Following the event featuring Heena and Michael Mak of Brown Butter Café on Sept. 19, tickets are now available for
Get tickets to upcoming Alumni Series Dinners at NAIT
Shared histories, shared dreams
NAIT served as the stage for the Maks’ love story (with food and each other), but common histories also played leading roles.
When they enrolled – strangers to each other – Michael and Heena were resolutely following through on dreams inspired largely by their fathers.
Michael remembers his dad as “a hard-working restaurateur.” As for Heena, she cherished the praise her own dad lavished on the food she loved to make for him.
At first, though, both had avoided the industry. Michael’s previous career was in computers. Heena promised her parents she would give university a shot. But the pull of the kitchen proved too great.
“After a year, I still felt like I needed to go to culinary school,” says Heena (pictured below with her dad).
The pair became fast friends, and shared a philosophy on learning. If NAIT was offering a buffet of knowledge and experience, they were keen to load up their plates.
Together, they dove into class projects and joined Team NAIT, a group of students who clocked countless extracurricular hours training for culinary competitions, sometimes around the world.
Somehow, they also worked, and for experience as much as money. They asked instructors for advice on who in the local culinary community might best add to their formal education.
“The teachers would say, ‘Hey, go see this, chef. You might learn a lot more from them,’” says Michael.
As the pair grew closer, they also began to share a new dream. They worked so well together – maybe well enough that they could open a place of their own one day.
More than a career
After graduation, the Maks kept working their ways through local kitchens, gleaning ideas. But it was about more than creating a great concept or kitchen.
“We were thinking of not just our careers,” says Michael. “We were thinking about our personal path. We wanted to get married; we wanted to have a family.”
That is, they wanted it all: a life in an industry they loved but also one as partners and parents.
“Long story short, we knew that if we created our own place, we'd have more control on how we could juggle work [and] life,” says Michael.
As owners of a restaurant now in its eighth year – and as mom and dad to a son now just as old – they arguably have it.
Invariably described as “cozy,” Brown Butter Café is well reviewed as a place for creative coffees and teas, pastries, breakfast sandwiches, and Asian-inspired mains.
Open at 8 a.m., it’s closed by 2 p.m., and never open on Sundays.
“It's kind of like a family day,” says Heena.
Perhaps most importantly, Brown Butter is designed to bring people together.
It’s meant, in some ways, to emulate the spirit of the Chinese restaurant of Michael’s father. The small-town diner was the place where friends met to catch up over a bite to eat, and where everyone knew each other. It was a space that fostered a sense of community.
"We knew that if we created our own place, we'd have more control on how we could juggle work [and] life.”
Ultimately, that’s the message the Maks hope to leave students with on Sept. 19: in working in food and hospitality, they’re becoming part of a community. That includes customers, but also local chefs and entrepreneurs who are just as ready to collaborate and help one another as they are to compete. Students will be able to draw from that as grads and, maybe one day, give back to it.
The Maks are happy to be in a place to do that now themselves. Michael recalls when he received the request from NAIT to lead the Alumni Series, he and Heena agreed without hesitation. They’d have to arrange childcare. Something would need to be done to cover things at the restaurant. But they weren’t worried. Love would find a way.