POTAGER Natural Café & Other Stuff
315 S Mesquite St. (two blocks south of Abram)
Monday – Saturday Serving Lunch from 11:00 to 3:00
Thursday – Saturday Serving Dinner from 5:00 to 9:00
Closed Sundays
(817) 861-2292
Pay-what-you-want for a fresh, delicious meal at Potager, a new restaurant which opened on January 16th on South Mesquite Street (just two blocks south of downtown Arlington). When the cafe first opened, it was for lunch only (11am to 3pm Mondays through Saturdays). The hours are now expanded to include dinner on Thursdays through Saturdays from 5pm to 9pm.
The selection changes daily because everything is made fresh-from-scratch each day. Potager uses locally grown, organic ingredients whenever possible. There are no printed menus. You order off of what’s written on the dry-erase board next to the counter. There are no waiters. You walk up to the counter, look at the board, and tell them what you want. They serve it to you right there, sort of like a buffet. The house rule is to take as much as you want, but only what you can eat. And, yes, you can definitely go back for “seconds”.
There will always be a soup, a salad, an entrée, vegetables, and a dessert.
You can go to the cafe’s Web site to see the menu (it’s posted a couple of days in advance). The site is www.potagercafe.com.
I dined at Potager on a Tuesday afternoon. That day the features included: Vegetable Bean Soup; Farm Ranch Salad with homemade Ranch dressing; Quiche with bits of salmon; organically-grown roasted honey balsamic chicken; a sautéed medley of spinach/mushroom/tomato; roasted potatoes; homemade bread; chocolate pie.
It was all good, especially the soup. And the quiche was very fluffy/light (delicious). And the chocolate filling in the pie was to-die-for. It was very rich. I don’t like meringue very much, but even the meringue was delicious.
There are no waiters, just the chefs and staff that serve you at the counter and work in the back. Yes, they’ll clear the tables, so you don’t have to worry about that. But you get your own drinks…there are carafes of water on the table, and jugs of flavored teas on a counter in the corner.
Now the quandary: “how much do I pay?”
There’s no pressure. There is a little hand-written sign that asks customers to be “fair” when determining the amount. The sign is next to a little table with a watering can, the old-fashioned kind you find in your grandmother’s garden. Discreetly put your cash in a watering can placed in the corner near the counter.
I put in $9.00. The owner and founder of Potager, Cynthia Chippindale, told The Dallas Morning News that most customers are leaving an average of $7 each, but the restaurant’s food costs are closer to $8 per customer.
Potager is an organic gardener as well as LeCordon Bleu-trained chef. Another of the Potager chefs, Nick Amoriello, trained at the Culinary Institute of America.
The restaurant is small…about 9 tables, maybe. It seats about 30-35 people. It was a steady stream of customers during my visit…every table was being used. But the service at the counter is fast. It is a casual, laid-back atmosphere.
I definitely intend to return to Potager as often as possible. It’s really good food that’s totally fresh. And it will be a new adventure each time because the menu changes daily.
Arlington Insider 