Sullivan Scrap Kitchen is not your average brunch spot. While restaurants overlook vegetable trimmings or throw away less-than-perfect produce, these individual actions add up. In fact, Americans waste a lot of food, roughly 40-percent of the country’s annual production according to FoodPrint.
Of that shocking figure, restaurants account for up to 26.4-percent, a surprise given the industry’s razor-thin margins and the ever-increasing cost of goods. But using up excess ingredients and odd bits demands a high level of ingenuity, not to mention more time and labor.
However, that doesn’t deter chef and owner Terence Rogers from his zero-waste mission at the City Park West cafe. “If you’re passionate about it, it doesn’t feel like too much extra work,” said Rogers. “It just feels like the right thing to do.”
The Chef
While pursuing his undergrad in economics, Rogers was an aspiring snowboard instructor who successfully landed a job at a Vermont ski resort. But rather than shredding the slopes, he was slinging pizzas at the busy lodge. Quickly, Rogers became hooked to the chaotic, yet creative environment of a working kitchen.
Stints at restaurants in Boston eventually led to pop-up dinners out of his apartment, where he built a countertop for his living room pool table. His girlfriend at the time and now wife, Holly Adinoff, sourced linens from Goodwill. From humble roots, they established a catering company, TBD Foods, and moved the concept to a Denver commissary kitchen in 2016.
As business grew, so did their desire to open their own space. Seeking inspiration, Rogers did a month-long stage at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a restaurant in New York that boasts two Michelin stars, as well as a Green star honoring industry leadership in sustainability.
“I really saw how root-to-tip cooking took place,” said Rogers, recalling how one supreme slice of a tomato would be plated, while the rest of the flesh would be turned into a sauce; the skins would be dehydrated and turned into a powder. “Seeing that was truly eye-opening.”
While at Blue Hill, Rogers said that several international chefs discussed staging at Relæ next, a now-shuttered fine dining restaurant in Copenhagen. It operated adjacent to a more casual sister concept, Manfreds. He explained, “They could buy a whole lamb, use the nicer pieces at the fine dining establishment, and then use the legs or the shanks in their place across the street.” For Rogers, learning of this concept was a lightbulb moment.
The Restaurant
“We first started toying with the idea with Lil Scrap Kitchen out of our commissary back in 2019,” said Rogers, who added that the kitchen was housed within a larger commercial property, which also leased space to an accounting firm, a ski company, and other businesses.
“One day a week, we’d sell two or three different sandwiches to everyone in the building,” commented Rogers. “We tried to incorporate excess ingredients from our catering or purchase a little extra and prep a little bit more so we weren’t wasting as much.”
Turns out the tenants liked it. So, with proof of concept, Sullivan Scrap Kitchen’s brick-and-mortar in City Park West was born.
“We started off with seven menu items, and it was just Holly and I. We did catering at night and we sold sandwiches from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. six days a week,” recalled Rogers, adding that the restaurant opened in July 2020, during the midst of the pandemic. “We tried to bring on dinner that fall, and got our liquor license. Two weeks later, indoor dining shut down again.”
Dinner service did, eventually, come to fruition. First it started with approachable fare and later, in the form of fancy amuse-bouches and seasonal shared plates. However, due to inconsistent turnout, Sullivan Scrap Kitchen pivoted again, moving away from dinner menus this past October. While it continues to offer a seasonal supper club series, the restaurant largely focuses on Denver diners’ favorite meals, brunch.
The Menu
While some places talk up the composting efforts, that bin is the last place Rogers wants food to end up. At Sullivan Scrap Kitchen, even mushroom stems and limp greens have value and endless potential.
“I like to call it a hierarchy of ingredients,” Rogers explained. “There are certain things that are perfect. You don’t need to do much to a perfectly ripe heirloom tomato, a peach, an incredible piece of steak.”
But, for items that need more than, say, a pinch of salt and a glug of good olive oil, he considers ways of manipulation. That includes cooking, roasting, pickling, and other forms of preservation.
The next tier encompasses ingredients that simply don’t look great. Rogers gave wilted herbs as an example, saying that they can be used in a sauce or perhaps a seedy pesto for sandwiches on house focaccia. Alongside onion peels and carrot tops, they could also create a flavorful vegetable stock. Meanwhile, softening fruit can be blitzed into a purée for yogurt parfaits and “seasonal” bellinis, which are among several indistinct brunch offerings.
“We’ve learned to build vagueness into menus,” said Rogers, adding that ambiguity allows for flexibility and avoids frequent menu reprints. “It’s hard to design a dish completely around spent or second-use ingredients because people need some familiarity to grasp onto.”
However, accompaniments and other flavor aspects are often dictated by potential “points of waste,” which Rogers takes note of when scanning what’s already on shelves and in the walk-in cooler.
Repurposing some ingredients is simple, like turning day-old bread into croutons or breadcrumbs. Day-old beignets become gooey, cinnamon-spiced monkey bread topped with honey cream cheese icing. Its “soup of the day” is also forgiving and allows items like unused tomato innards, over-ordered kale, and excess mashed potatoes from a catering event to be used in a meaningful way.
Behind the bar, beet skins and ginger peels come together to create a refreshing limeade. Other ingredients infuse an array of simple syrups, while spent espresso grounds flavor its housemade coffee liquor.
But Rogers admitted, “It’s not always an easy solution,” like in the case of trout skin. Fork-wielding diners at Sullivan Scrap Kitchen weren’t convinced of the crispy, unconventional Caesar salad garnish. However, Rogers found another innovative solution.
“We turned them into dog treats,” he said. “I just pile them up for a few weeks, and then we dehydrate them and give them to the dogs on the patio.”
Even oyster shells evade the composter, becoming natural fertilizer for the restaurant’s plant wall.
The Partners
Beyond using scraps to their fullest, the eatery largely works with other Colorado businesses including Boulder-based Esoterra Culinary Garden; Croft Family Farm in Kersey; local beverage producers such as Restoration Vineyards, Idlewild Spirits, and Ironton Distillery; plus many more.
However, being in-state isn’t the only qualifier for collaboration. Especially when it comes to sourcing proteins, Sullivan Scrap Kitchen is picky.
“We try to be cognizant that meat is not great for the environment,” admitted Rogers. “But when you can get it at a small ranch,” like its Longmont-based partner Buckner Family Ranch, “that does grass-fed [beef] and pasture-raised lamb, it has a much lower environmental impact than the feed lots up in Greeley.”
For a while, Sullivan Scrap Kitchen removed chicken from its menu as it was unable to find a local farm that met its sustainability standards. Now, it’s working with Wisdom’s Natural Poultry out of Haxtun, Colorado. Every part of the bird gets used, from grilled chicken breast to deboned, cornmeal-fried legs and thighs, which appear atop sourdough waffles and within fluffy biscuit sandwiches.
Restaurant items that go unsold benefit local nonprofits including food bank Metro Caring and Open Door Ministries’ cafe. The restaurant has also supported hunger relief organizations including We Don’t Waste and Slow Food, as well as Zero Foodprint, which addresses climate change through regenerative agriculture.
“I’ve gotten so much from the environment, the planet, and the outdoors,” said the chef. “I just want to be as much of a steward as possible.”
Visit Sullivan Scrap Kitchen for brunch Thursday through Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. 1740 E. 17th Ave., Denver, sullivanscrapkitchen.com
