From field to fork: How local farms are feeding Colorado diners
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BOULDER, Colo. — On an early Tuesday morning in Boulder, frost settled on parked cars as a cold wind shook leafless branches. Mark DeRespinis walked toward the greenhouse on his farm, his hands stuffed in his pockets, leaving footprints in the snow.
The moment he entered the greenhouse, however, his glasses fogged up. He approached tables of luscious green produce, all growing well despite the cold weather outside.
“Here we are in the second week of December and the [farmers] are bringing in an assortment of products that we're able to harvest despite some of the challenges that obviously we're facing in the general environment,” he said.
DeRespinis launched Esoterra Culinary Garden in 2018. He sells local and organic produce to restaurants across Colorado.
“We build up our relationships with customers and continue our ongoing relationships with different plants that we love,” DeRespinis said. “Growing them and then sharing with our chefs.”
These relationships are mutually beneficial for Colorado's agriculture and restaurant industries. Money stays in the state, and diners can eat local, fresh food.
Typically, restaurants source their food from commercial farms all over the country. Places like California and Iowa are high agriculture-producing states due to their soil quality and favorable climates.
However, commercial farming has a lot of downsides, from water pollution due to chemical runoff to the quality of produce after transportation across the country.
“We provide a very difficult product altogether,” said DeRespinis. “You can’t put commercial salad mix that comes off a truck and expect people to be excited about paying $15 for that plate.”
DeRespinis says Esoterra runs its operation with funding from partnerships with restaurants, the farm service agency and also local and federal governments.
A growing three-acre farm, on a 100-acre land leased from the city of Boulder, Esoterra focuses on growing produce that are used in culinary settings. From calendulas to daikon radishes, the 14 people working at the farm supply ingredients to more than 50 restaurants in Colorado, including The Wolf’s Tailor, Tavernetta and Potager.
Farmers are still able to grow produce like carrots and ice lettuce during the colder months in Colorado, covering them with blankets when the sun is down so that the vegetables don’t freeze over. When the sun rises, DeRespinis and his team remove the blankets, allowing the plants to receive sunlight and heat up. They repeat the cycle at nightfall.
DeRespinis says that working with the natural ecosystem is much more nurturing to the plants than speeding up the process. He cultivates the produce organically without using chemicals, and the farm also practices a no-till philosophy, preserving the health of the natural soil.
“We're exploring how to basically create a super productive garden that's both viable as a business and also preserves and essentially heals our relationship to the land,” DeRespinis said.
One of DeRespinis’ clients is Potager, a farm-to-table restaurant and wine bar on the corner of 11th and Ogden in Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.
Started in 1997 by Teri Rippeto and her father Tom Rippeto, Potager’s’s vision is to “draw upon the season and what is grown locally.” The Rippetos sold the restaurant to Paul and Eileen Warthen in 2019.
Paul and Eileen Warthen said that it was their dream to open a restaurant together ever since they crossed paths in New York City. Growing up on a 500-acre dairy farm, Paul understood what it meant to be a farmer and work in a space where quality ingredients led to quality food. Along with Eileen’s background in wine, it only seemed natural to dream that they’d run their own culinary institution one day.
That dream came to fruition when the Rippetos reached out to them to take over the restaurant.
“People don't just come here to eat. They come to our home and have dinner and break bread,” said Paul Warthen. “[Teri] had a reputation already as being the only real farm-to-table restaurant owner in Denver.”
Potager has partnered with 32 farms across Colorado, including Esoterra, sourcing all of their produce locally.
The Warthens said that the menu is developing every season. Every four to five weeks, it changes according to what the farmers can grow and provide. Work on a new menu starts the moment a previous one is released by the restaurant.
In the wintertime, the restaurant adapts to what the local farming community is able to grow in colder temperatures. Hearty plants that typically grow well in the winter include beets, carrots and cabbage.
Collaboration with the local farms are a focal point of Potager’s business model. Paul Warthen said the farmers communicate with them about what they can plant for them months, and sometimes even a year, in advance.
“It's these commitments that we have to them and that they have to us. They trust that everything they put in the ground, we're going to buy and when we buy it and we trust that they're going to grow,” said Paul Warthen.
Eileen Warthen said that the restaurant’s mentality has always been local, whether it’s food or beverages. You won’t find a Budweiser at Potager, but you’ll find a 303 Lager brewed by local Denver brewery Station 26.
“This is all about relationships, the local community,” said DeRespinis. “Every time a dollar is spent on produce from industrial farms in California, that money leaves Colorado.”
Colorado has a growing number of farm-to-table restaurants, but places like Potager in Denver and the Black Cat in Boulder have been leaders in the model for decades.
The modern farm-to-table movement started in the 1970s due to a growing American audience who were discontent with processed foods.
In Colorado, the biggest struggle of a farm-to-table concept is working with the agricultural landscape that Colorado provides. Because of the state’s water scarcity and the variable climate, much of the mainstream produce and vegetation can only grow during certain times of the year.
During the main season (April to December) at Esoterra, the farm works with 50 restaurants throughout the state. For the rest of the year however, that number fluctuates from about 10 to 15 restaurants.
“We become treasure hunters in the Winter, we plant super hearty plants in our plant tunnels that can survive the extreme temperatures,” said DeRespinis.
Even in the Winter, the local produce that Potager receives from the local farms with whom they partner shine as the star of their dishes.
Cooks at Potager are well-versed in knowing when to manipulate a vegetable versus when not to. Paul Warthen said that the farmers and nature have both done their job, so when the produce comes across the chef, they only have to know how to treat the vegetable.
“If everything has been grown properly and it's already so good, then why do you do anything to it at all?” Paul Warthen says.
On their current seasonal menu, Potager features a koginut squash cooked in brown butter miso, supplemented with marinated king oyster mushrooms, cider crema and scallion.
The cooks learn about putting emphasis on the quality produce and so do the front house staff.
Prior to every evening service, Paul Warthen and the cooks relay the special dishes, ingredients and updates to Eileen and the servers, who take careful notes so they can present the information to diners.
“I'm grateful for the guests that love [Potager] today because she wouldn't be a restaurant without all the people that come here and enjoy everything,” said Eileen Warthen.
To commemorate their partnership for the year, DeRespinis and his staff dined at Potager earlier this year, having conversation with Potager’s staff and eating dishes that included their produce.
“It really was so remarkable about how much it made sense. It makes sense when you sit down and you could feel connected back to the land through a dish that you're eating,” said DeRespinis.
“We've had wine dinners with people who were winemakers come in and they bring their whole family in,” said Eileen Warthen. “Everything is just meant to grow community.”
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