Sari Brown’s The Yellow Carrot offering sweet and savory fare to go

DURANGO, Colo. – One day, in 2005, Café Sari was gone, and the Durango community mourned.

Gone were the mouth-watering crab cakes, shrimp and grits, bouillabaisse – all the taste-tempting items on the up-scale diner’s eclectic menu.

And Sari. The community missed Sari, whose name they’d finally learned to pronounce. (Sari as in Mary, Jerry, Barry). The vivacious and self-educated chef/restaurateur had taken off to travel and spend time with family.

But she’s back in Durango – and so is her food. Sari Brown is the creative force behind The Yellow Carrot, a twist on “fast food” offering the discriminating Durango community “sweet and savory fare to go.” Tucked away adjacent to Zia Taqueria at 3101 Main Ave., The Yellow Carrot is an outgrowth of Brown’s love of catering.

“When I moved back (to Durango), people started asking me to do parties and cakes, and it just snowballed from there,” said Brown, who had begun dating her now husband and partner in the business, Jeff Brown. “Two years later, I was overwhelmed with private catering. Before I opened (The Yellow Carrot) in December, I had 22 parties in one month. It was crazy.”

Indeed, while preparing dinner parties in other people’s kitchens had its advantages, time had come to open a commercial kitchen of her own. Brown hadn’t initially considered a retail operation, but the space that had been Eco Home Center lent itself to just that. The natural clay walls and a built in display remain, but Brown has otherwise transformed it into a bright and cheerful space that is The Yellow Carrot.

“When we were getting the place together, I thought it would be fun to do something where I could sell pastries and my jellies and jams and all of that,” said Brown. “Then we decided to do soups and sandwiches too. And (I thought) what about take and bake? Nobody really does take and bake. It’s gotten really popular.”

Thus, what had begun as an extension of Brown’s private catering effort, evolved into, in essence, three businesses – and more could be in the offing.

“My problem is I want to do everything,” said Brown. “I want to add all these new things, and my husband Jeff just says ‘slow down.’”

The Yellow Carrot is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m., though the cooking begins early for Brown and her sous chefs Paul Spadora and Juan Carlos. Everything is prepared fresh daily, using the freshest ingredients possible. Brown is already working with local growers to secure some of the more hard-to-find ingredients, and she looks forward to summer when fresh vegetables and fruits come into season.

 

While Brown’s favorite types of cooking are Southern and Italian, The Yellow Carrot has no particular “theme” to its food. The Southern and Italian influences are evident, in for example the Jumbo Lump Crab Cakes and Southern Style Shrimp and Grits, as well as the Bolognese Lasagna or Fontina Stuffed Meatballs, but mainstay take-and-bake entrees run the gamut from Asian Braised Short Ribs and Shepherd’s Pie to Chipotle Sea Bass and Chorizo and Wild Salmon Stuffed with Asparagus.

“It’s everything I love to do,” said Brown, who began her career as a teacher, and discovered cooking when moving from Wyoming to the deep South, where she opened her first restaurant. “We do have specials, and we are always adding and taking away. In the summer we want to have a really fresh, light fun menu, and maybe even pre-pattied stuffed burgers that people can throw on the grill. These are all the little ideas that are spinning in my head.”

Breads are baked daily in-house, and featured on the generous sandwiches such as Midwestern Fried Pork Tenderloin, Turkey-Brie-Cranberry and Roasted Vegetable. The pastry case includes an ever-changing sampling of desserts, though a generous supply of Chocolate Ginger Cookies and White Chocolate Cherry Cookies is always available.

“Homemade” retail offerings include salad dressings, salsas, jams, jellies, butters and more – all with The Yellow Carrot twist. Labels featuring Chocolate Blackberry Banana Salsa, Vanilla Peach Butter, Fennel Fig Vinaigrette, White Chocolate Raspberry Butter and Blackberry Hibiscus Chipotle Chutney, encourage purchase.

“My sweet potato chips and beet chips – every single time I did any party and I included those, people loved them,” said Brown. “So I said, OK, I have to sell the chips. My husband makes the popcorn (Grandma Brown’s Famous Carmel Popcorn). It’s his mom’s recipe from when he was growing up. People love it – it’s different.”

Also “different” is the display of Nick Blaisdell pottery featured with a variety of fine olive oils. Brown creates value-added items by filling the dishes with her various entrees or salads and selling them as a package – for example, a potluck dish for those too busy (or unable) to prepare an offering.

 “I will do anything if you give me the time,” said Brown. “Call me (970.259.3773) on your way home, and say, ‘Can I have it warmed, can you make it without this or do it with that?’ That’s what a caterer does really. I want people to eat what they want… Come, eat good food.”

On the official catering side of the business, Brown can serve groups up to 150, and she customizes all meals to her clients, including creative presentation and food design. She boasts a list of some 250 dishes she’s found to be “fun and popular” over her 10-plus years in the business – but those are merely “ticklers” from which to begin an event. Then there are the cakes – perhaps the most “in demand” item from The Yellow Carrot. “If you had told me five years ago I was going to be doing cakes like I’m doing, I would have never, ever believed it,” said Brown, who now creates decadent, “gooey” and ornately decorated confections. “I don’t do anything normal. It always has to be crazy. A friend of mine asked me to do a cake for her husband’s birthday about a year an a half ago, and it just snowballed. Now I do tons of cakes, and every single one is different.” As to the name The Yellow Carrot? When carrots first originated some 5,000 years ago in Mid-Asia, they were yellow, white, purple, red, green and black – not orange. Brown regularly uses the yellow variety in her catering, but hadn’t necessarily considered it a name until a road trip with her husband and good friend prompted the conversation.

 

 

 

“I use yellow carrots a lot because they’re fun and different. It’s what I like to do,” said Brown. “When they said, ‘What about The Yellow Carrot?’ I just loved it. That was in June and we didn’t get the business open until December. But it just stuck.”