Potager, a French word meaning “kitchen or vegetable garden”, is aptly named: the back patio, a garden where diners sit surrounded by flowering plants and pungent herbs, inside, rustic French décor: unfinished white walls with occasional patches of exposed brick, a lounge with farm tables and an overstuffed couch, an L-shaped bar with 12 stools, a dining room with white linen-covered tables and place settings at a jaunty angle, an open kitchen, and a large handwritten chalkboard listing specials of the day, and a heart-felt quote. It’s genuinely unpretentious restaurant, where the focus is simply and unmistakably on the food: incredible, “you-haven’t-had-food-like-this-since-grandma’s” food, where natural and organic ingredients are treated with the utmost respect. “It’s more than just what’s in season… our purpose is to make food true to the food itself, true to the ingredients. To us, a restaurant’s purpose is to showcase what farmers grow,” says chef/owner Teri Ripetto.

"Food is the only beautiful thing that truly nourishes,” (Richard Gere, “Autumn in New York”).

Potager chef/owner Teri Ripetto sources all her food from all natural and organic suppliers. Every week from spring to fall, Ripetto drives to the Boulder County Farmers Market in downtown Boulder, chatting with each of the farmers, most of which are now longtime friends, towing a little red wagon to fill with produce for her restaurant for the week. “The Boulder County Farmer’s Market is the only market in Colorado that only sells what they themselves grow,” she explains. In winter, when the market is closed, Teri buys her produce from Grower’s Organic. “We change the menu every 4-6 weeks, and eat seasonally here – during the winter we just don’t serve a lot of fresh produce, we serve a lot more meat, braised dishes, root vegetables… We have an insulated blanket on the back patio, where we store vegetables like pumpkins and squash all winter long,” she says. Most of Teri’s meat comes from Colorado’s own John Long Farms, Rocking K Ranch, Niman Ranch, and Heritage Food, a company that works only with small farmers raising “heritage breed” animals native to this country.

Ripetto grew up in a small farming town in MO. At age 20, while managing a café, the owners rewarded her hard work by taking her with them on a Californian restaurant tour. “We ate our way from LA to San Francisco,” she says. This was the turning point for Ripetto, who was deeply inspired by California-style farm-fresh food. She moved to San Francisco and, while working full time, went to school full time, receiving a culinary degree at the California Culinary Academy.
In 1989, in her late 20s, Teri moved back to Missouri to open a restaurant with her dad, Tom. Although they chose Columbia, a college town, Trattoria Strada Nova was a step or two ahead of the other restaurants in town: the menu was California-style Italian with an emphasis on fresh produce, they changed the menu every day, they were the only restaurant in Columbia with an espresso machine, and the only ones who sold wine by the glass. “Back then we were worried that no one would spend $3 on a cup of coffee, or $5 on a glass of wine!” she remembers. They needn’t have been concerned: from the moment they opened the door until they closed five years later they had “pages and pages of reservations”, and never looked back.

In spite of this success, Teri eventually realized she needed to leave Missouri for once and for all. She moved to Seattle, WA and was soon hired at Place Pigalle across the street from the Seattle Farmers Market. “It was such a relief,” she says. “All I had to do was come in, cook, and go home.” Teri learned a great deal about keeping the focus on the food at Place Pigalle, but soon had to face the fact that on a personal level she was 32 years old, still making $10/hour, and still struggling to pay the rent.

In the mid 90s Teri and her dad, Tom, decided it was time to open another restaurant, this time chosing Denver, a good half-way point between her father’s home in Missouri and the west coast where Teri now had many ties.

“We wanted an interesting neighborhood place – one that would stand out from the run-of-the-mill, typically trendy eateries,” she says. Thanks to Teri’s creative vision, a seemingly-unlikely laundromat and drycleaners at 11th and Ogden became the building for Potager. Of course, everything had to be completely gutted and renovated, and Teri and Tom did most of the work themselves. It was a courageous, and frankly, crazy move, since they had no working capital. Tom risked everything to get Potager started and keep it afloat, even putting up his house as collateral against the loan. “It was very stressful,” Teri understates. “By every book you read, we should not have made it. I just never allowed myself to think that it wouldn’t succeed. It was like: “if we build it, they will come.””

Teri stuck to this belief through some lean, nail-biting times. “We lost a lot of staff in the first couple of years, since we had so few customers,” she laughs. She also stuck to her values. “This is a business that can suck everything out of you,” Teri says. “I knew there had to be a healthy way to own a restaurant, which is why I have a lot of boundaries with my time. For example, we don’t do catering, we don’t do events. Since we don’t take reservations, we won’t close down the restaurant for a private party – I wouldn’t want a regular to show up that night and find the restaurant closed (to them).”

Potager has now been consistently busy for the past few years, also due in no small part to Teri’s incredible food: melt-in-your-mouth Twice Baked Tarragon Soufflé comes with a Lettuce Broth, Slow Cooked Heritage Pork Shoulder is rubbed with Fennel Seed and Garlic, and served with Asparagus Pudding, Roasted Vidalia Onion and Pork Jus.

Unsurprisingly, it’s really important to Teri to be a good manager to her staff. “We have picnics and farm tours so the staff can see the process. Everybody here on staff works four shifts/week and has three days off. I respect my staff’s personal lives, and we all respect each other. We talk about that a lot in staff meetings.” Incredibly, Potager also closes twice a year so the staff can take two weeks of vacation – once in June and once at Christmas.

“You just take care of your staff, the food, the farmers; we keep our money in the community… all the things I believe are important to owning a restaurant business. If I take care of the staff, they’ll take care of the customers. That’s how you keep the spirit in your business – how you keep it personal; how your staff feel like they make a difference, and your customers feel like they’re making a difference.”

On Wednesdays, Potager is a drop off location for “Plant a Row (for the hungry)”, a national organization partnering with MetroCareRing to provide fresh produce to the hungry in metro Denver; people who, at best, receive mostly canned, non-perishable foods. Teri welcomes “extra food from your garden, or from local farmers at farmers markets.” For more information on Plant a Row, visit www.gardenwriters.org/PAR.

Address:
1109 Ogden Street, Denver
303.832.5788
(they do not accept reservations)

Hours:
Dinner only
Tues-Thurs 5-10, Fri-Sat 5-11