Farmer's Table Restaurant began nearly thirty years ago near the corner of Taft Hill and Elizabeth, in a stand-alone building anchoring the southern end of the King Soopers shopping center. This building, at 1035 South Taft Hill Road, initially housed a convenience store. After a few years, the space was converted into a Mexican restaurant, but somewhere along the line, the theme changed to down-home cooking, and the Farmer's Table was born. Virgil Cline owned and presided over the Farmer's Table for many years. Originally open from pre-dawn to late in the evening, Virgil decided to cut the hours back and just serve breakfast and lunch.
In late 2003, health issues pushed Virgil to look for new owners. Through his financial advisor, he found Adrienne Echelberger and Lenka Johnson, cousins who grew up in north Texas. Adrienne, who has chef's training, served as day-to-day manager and "foodie", while Lenka was the "behind-the-scenes" partner and consultant on all things visual.
Shortly after their purchase of the business, in early 2004, someone (who will remain name-less) decided Farmer's Table needed a drive-thru and popped the clutch on a pick-up to come through the front wall of the building. We made the Coloradoan on that one - mostly because someone else had done almost exactly the same thing only two weeks before on the north end of the building! The fire department stepped in to board up the front wall, a crew worked all night cleaning up broken glass that had flown into the dining area, and we opened on time the next morning. The resulting repair resulted in our gaining about a square foot more in floor space along the front of the building, when the wall covering the full-length glass from the convenience store days was removed.
2010 has brought lots of changes to Farmer's Table.
First was the big move! With a lot of help from lenders, we purchased the old KFC building across the street to the north from King Soopers and renovated it. We closed our original location on January 18th and took that week to move all our equipment to the new - to us, anyway - building. Thanks to our AWESOME staff, we opened for a trial run that Friday and then were off and running.
In May, Adrienne left Farmer's Table to pursue another venture. Since then, Lenka has been found on-site much more frequently and is getting to know the regulars. Please introduce yourself!