Dinner @ Potager
We’ve been wanting to visit Potager for a while now & finally got the chance to check it out on Friday night for dinner. The restaurant’s concept is what had us most intrigued. Their menu changes daily & is all about what’s local, what’s organic & what’s in season. The disconnect in our society between the farm & the table is so immense, it’s intimidating. Potager’s mission is to help people reconnect to the food they eat & be more aware of where it comes from.
If that concept alone wasn’t enough to start some buzz in this city, their pay-what-you-can policy is another publicity-sparker. Their menu has no set prices, so you pay what you feel is appropriate for what you ate. There are suggested prices listed on a paper where you leave the money, but ultimately the decision is yours. Place the cash in an envelope or run your credit yourself & leave the slip in the designated watering can. It’s a bold concept, but it seems to be working for them; they’ve already crossed the one-year hurdle, which can be the most challenging for restaurants.
So enough about the idea behind Potager… What about the food? As I mentioned before, the menu changes daily. They post it on their site so you can look it up ahead of time. They serve until close or when they run out, whichever happens first. We arrived for dinner at 8:00, an hour before close. This wasn’t bad necessarily, but a few of the menu items (a cucumber leek soup, the sock-eye salmon & baked bread) were already 86′d. What was left on the menu though, was delicious.
Their lentil soup was thick & well-seasoned. (I didn’t even mind the fact that I was eating hot soup in the middle of Summer.) We got the last of the blue crab cakes & I’m quite pleased we did. It was fresh, lightly breaded & accompanied by a tangy remoulade sauce. Since the salmon was out, the pork piccata was the only remaining choice as a main. Sauteed onions & capers swam in the lemon-butter sauce covering the slice of roasted pork. The sauce was nice, but my slice of meat had a lot of fat on it. It’s a personal preference, but I really don’t care for it that way. It gets a *shrug* from me.
However, all was forgiven about the pork because of their chilled pasta salad with Italian cold cuts. Ah-ma-zing. My favorite bite of the night, for sure. It was on Saturday’s dinner menu as well, so my hope is that it’s a reoccurring dish.
What I like most about the meal—the whole experience really—is how much it felt like having dinner at an old friend’s house. The silverware is all mixed & matched, the tablecloths look like they came from your grandmother’s house. When you walk in for the first time, it’s a little uncomfortable. Do you sit down or wait to be seated? (Sit.) How do you order? (Straight to the counter & let him know how big or small a portion you want.) But once you get over that initial bumbling feeling, it’s lovely. Potager is a great little place in Arlington, one we’ll be returning to again soon. From what I gathered watching the other diners who were familiar with the system & knew the owner by name, a lot of people come back for more.
315 South Mesquite Street
Arlington, TX | 76010
817.861.2292
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This restaurant is owned by a professor’s wife at my school! My Evolution/Ecology teacher has a pic/link to their website and in the reviews section, there is a link to the littledish! She mentions great writing and photos. What a small world!!!