Scratch Farm Kitchen

Meals with zeal in downtown Lafayette

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No hard selling today: The evangelist—for local foods and for this  restaurant in particular—has happened to sit beside me, a woman who drove an hour to this navy blue house on Garfield Street. I heard there was a good burrito. And even with the threat of rain, here I am, sitting out in the courtyard, waiting blithely for my meal.

But maybe I’m the lucky one. I needed to know everything about Lafayette’s Scratch Farm Kitchen and here was Luke Butler, who has been gobbling up the good news since he met the chef-owner-farmers, Jamie Harson and Kelsey Leger, in fall 2018 at the local farmers market. They had an increasingly popular food truck and no other employees. He offered, for free, to be their first. 

Though the offer was declined, Butler has since changed his major from biology to political science, with thoughts of working in food policy in the future. He started a food blog (lukebutlerjr.wordpress.com) on local restaurants and his own nascent efforts. He’s working on a petition to create more opportunities for farmers to access local restaurants and vice versa. But the most crucial difference to life now is his exposure to high-quality ingredients and his ability to suss them out himself. “I can really taste food,” he said.

With a mouthful of Wagyu beef, turmeric rice, and the sort of burly Parmesan shavings that would arise if you hadn’t groomed your Parmesan beard in nigh on a decade, all snug in a tortilla made two miles from the restaurant, I had no way to argue. But I was tasting too, and so had nothing to argue about.

Scratch Farm Kitchen is a highly suggestible place. In June 2019, Leger and Harson opened up a brick-and-mortar in downtown Lafayette; serving breakfast and lunch, with special events in between, the restaurant has had a line out the door in daylight hours since. Potted citrus bows merrily across the front mat, brushing visitors and announcing new entrances like a bell. Even before I pored over the menu, I was taken by the wall of local art opposite, particularly the fat and skinny portraits, not still-lifes, of produce, by Lafayette artist Marshall Blevins. Her turnip, especially cherubic, suspended me between hunger and admiration. Here, though, happily, I could indulge both.

Behind the front counter, the chalkboard still bore the dust of yesterday’s menu. I had driven far for the famous burrito but had a reckoning when faced with my options. Not only did I need to decide whether I was more in the mood for lunch or breakfast at eleven am (I will never truly decide this) but also whether I’d count calories with the Pretty Plate (a delicate salad with two farm-fresh sides whose bold hues will embarrass your Instagram filters) or go whole hog with the Boudini (a boudin patty on skillet biscuit, with a honey drizzle, side of turnip kimchi and hash potatoes, and, of course, a cheery farm egg). 

Beneath the menu, a board headlined “Who’s Growing What” was propped against the wall, keeping the restaurant accountable to its ethos. Woe unto Harson and Leger if this board is ever bare, or worse, if I were to Google the name of the egg producers (Gene and Toby) and find they were actually a shell company for Sysco (pun definitely intended). But I’ll feel a certain shame, too, if the only time I see these names is on the Scratch Farm chalkboard, because Bien-Aime in Arnaudville likely wants everyone to have their radishes, tatsoi, broccoli, collards, and kale. Scratch Farm is not here to monopolize but to mentor.

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And according to Leger, it’s easy, even as a restaurant, to fill out a menu with local items even if they aren’t always the cheapest. The key is to lean toward vegetables. “The meat is where it gets expensive.” 

I had no trouble leaning toward these vegetables. I came away with kumquat jam on the tip of my nose from leaning too close to the beets.

The partnership of Harson and Leger allows for an intimate understanding of the wonders and travails of the local food chain. Harson has operated a farm herself for over a decade. Its permaculture practices prize the natural slope of the earth. This uber-eco-friendly striving for sustainability underscores Scratch Farm Kitchen too, where you’ll notice there are no drinking straws.

Leger is the chef of the equation, having cooked for rigid diets at New York restaurants and for local palates here in Lafayette. Her sensitive creations show off the area’s abundance, and while it’s not a strict rule at Scratch Farm, she’s hit upon a certain blend that seems more than trend but a truism that will enter the Cajun Country cooking canon: if heat and earth brought your bushel of carrots here to the kitchen, then heat and earth—sprinkled in the form of Indian spices—are only fitting companions as the produce heads toward the plate. The rice is suffused with turmeric and the beets rendered iridescent with a drizzle of yogurt.

I, like Luke Butler, want to tell everyone what I’ve found. I want to adopt Leger’s continent-hopping flair with Louisiana ingredients. I want a plate heavy with vegetables.

It’s partly just her preference, said Leger, but there’s a practicality in adopting certain Indian flavors and dishes too. “We just get a ton of greens,” she said. And before a tendril can wilt or a stem can soften, the cooks will ensure nothing goes to waste with a big batch of “Cajun saag.” Greens stretched with cheese and spice—frugality we can all get behind.

Even though these are fruits and vegetables you have seen and likely tasted before (and by the owners’ own admission, proclamation even, were grown by other hands), there’s an Edenic glimmer to all enterprises at Scratch Farm. Within these walls—and I count the dewy courtyard too—Leger, Harson, and the gang seem to create something new and free to name. Evangelism is a natural offshoot. I, like Luke Butler, want to tell everyone what I’ve found. I want to adopt Leger’s continent-hopping flair with Louisiana ingredients. I want a plate heavy with vegetables.

“This is food how it should be,” insisted Butler.

But you don’t need a writing platform to show your faith in Scratch Farm. On my second visit, I watched Leger fill a glass (not plastic) container with a rainbow of beans, greens, and watermelon radishes, with a crown of red amaranth on top. My head whipped between these layers and the chalkboard menu, where I could not find an analog to order for myself. Leger told me about her group of lunchtime regulars who do not need a single glance at the chalkboard to know that they’ll worship at the House of Scratch for lunch that day. “‘Just feed us,’ they say, and it’s great. We can use up a lot of ingredients this way,” said Leger.

No waste then, but haste—to David Richter in Sunset for more cabbage and sweet potatoes and to Cajun Acres in Arnaudville for hydroponic butter lettuce. Gene and Toby have the eggs, while more of Two Dog Farms’ radishes will be salted and smothered into kimchi. Every ingredient has a purpose or it will … just check tomorrow’s menu.  

Follow Scratch Farm Kitchen on Facebook and Instagram at @scratch_this.