Interview and Field Observation Report

Sample #2

Potager: A Paradigm of Local Food Consumption

As the rain beads off the windshield and the sun fades over the horizon, I

watch as signs for streets and storefronts whiz by.

“Where is this place?” My friend asks in almost tangible aggravation.

“It should be on this block here, between 11th and 12th” I state as we pull up

to a glass box, which inside in bustling with life and conversation.

Our destination is Potager, a local restaurant located in the quaint Capitol Hill

neighborhood of North Denver. The restaurant was founded on the principle of

eating locally and minimizing time spent between the harvesting of food and when it

is consumed.

Inside, the crowd is comprised of folks from all walks of life, from the twenty-

somethings chatting over a bottle of wine in the far corner, to the family of four

trying to coax a mouth-watering entrée down one of their toddler’s throats. The area

is setup around a bar in the middle of everything, with about 20 polished wood

tables surrounding it. From the chalkboard announcing the latest specials to the oil

paintings of wine bottles on the distant wall, everything about the establishment

says homey, rustic and local.

Founded in 1997, Potager has maintained the commitment to providing high-

quality, healthy food to its diners. The menu changes each month to cater to what

ingredients are available according to the season, as to provide the freshest food

possible. Their philosophy is summed up eloquently and appropriately on their

website: “Potager encourages diners to partake in the immediacy and excitement of

vegetables just from the ground, fruit right off the branch, and fish straight out of the

sea.” (“Vision”)

With the average American foodstuff travelling upwards of 1500 miles (Hill

1), Potager provides a fresh and local option in an increasingly globalized network

of food sharing and transport. In an interview with owner and head chef Terri

Ripetto, she stated that, although there is no easy solution or quick fix for Americans

unhealthy eating habits and norm of eating items thousands of miles from their

homes, “I do believe that we reach a lot of people by doing what we do because it’s

the right thing to do. If we reach a few people, maybe they’ll reach a few people and

on and on.” It would seem that Ripetto is reaching far more than just “a few people,”

but even a few can make a drastic difference in the food miles behind a food product

as well as the energy and resources used to transport it. The Leopold Study for

Sustainable Agriculture conducted in 2001, compared local vs. conventional food

production in Iowa. It was reported that 16 different types of produce only totaled

716 combined food miles when grown and shipped locally, food miles being “the

distance food travels from the location where it is produced to where it will

eventually be eaten” (Hill 1), while those same 16 fruits and vegetables totaled an

astounding 25,301 food miles when grown and shipped conventionally (Hill 5).

What’s more, the same study discovered that a conventional semitrailer used to ship

food used an estimated 368,102 gallons of fuel a year, while an Iowa regional

semitrailer only used an estimated 22,005 gallons a year (Hill 5). Statistics such as

these help tremendously support Ripetto’s claim that even if only a few people

strive to make a difference, that difference is enough to save enormous amounts of

time and resources.

Ripetto also talked about the immediacy demanded by the American culture,

stating, “we demand to have whatever we want whenever we want it. We demand

thousands of choices, whether they make sense or not and whether they’re actually

hurting us or not.” Ripetto strives to offer dozens of choices throughout the year, but

ones that do make sense, both because they are seasonal as well as economically

beneficial to our own community. “[Buying locally] keeps our money in our own

communities—supporting local farmers, ranchers, growers.” The restaurant uses

products from over 25 local farmers and purveyors, only buying out of state to

obtain citrus in the winter months as well as seafood, although even that is

purchased from “small, independent fishermen that fish sustainably.”

Potager is a restaurant committed to obtaining food in the simplest, most

efficient and organic ways possible, trying to implement ideals of older times when

just about everybody grew and harvested their own food. The name Potager is a

French word meaning “small kitchen garden” which would be located just outside

the kitchen, which “made it easy to tend and harvest on a daily basis” (Friedberg

161), as well as allowed for the freshest of ingredients to always be available. In her

book, Fresh: A Perishable History, Susanne Friedberg discusses French Potagers as

well as other, more ancient forms of local food production such as the raised garden

beds of the Japanese, or the okra and pepper plots of African villagers (Freidberg

160). Friedberg describes an ideal these communities held, which was not to

harvest too much, and to only harvest the freshest fruits and vegetables possible,

“the cook could pick just enough herbs for the evening meal, or just the tomatoes

that ripened in an afternoon” (Freidberg 161). This ideal is attempted to be, and

successfully being perpetuated hundreds of years later at Potager, whose owner

states “to get the vitamins we need from fruit and vegetables, it must be ripened in

the sun on the vine, tree or bush.”

As evidenced by the statistics in The Leopold Study for Sustainable

Agriculture, small changes can make an enormous difference. Those changes can

include knowing where food comes from, doing research, or even pledging to eat

locally for a specific period of time or within a specific radius. 100milediet.org is an

organization founded by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon that encourages people to

pledge to not eat food grown more than 100 miles from their place of residence for

an entire year (“About”). Initiatives such as these, as well as restaurateurs such as

Terri Ripetto providing the option to eat healthier and more locally, allow the public

to truly be able to eat in a more local, sustainable manner. Consider this question by

Ripetto, and decide which type of food you prefer: “Imagine the energy, the feeling

that comes from food grown on a factory farm by factory workers that mindlessly do

their jobs…and then imagine food grown in beautiful rows of all different colors an

textures…volunteers and interns and small farmers supporting their families and

doing work that they love. Which do you want to ingest into your body?”

Works Cited

“About.” http://100milediet.org/ Friedberg, Susanne. Fresh: A Perishable History. London: The Belknap Press of

Harvard University Press, 2009.

Hill, Holly. Food Miles: Background and Marketing. NCAT Research, 2008. http://www.attra.org/attra-pub/foodmiles.html

“Vision.” http://www.potagerrestaurant.com/Farms.html