Boulder Magazine Restaurant Profiles | TERROIR

By Kuvy Ax
Photos by Phil Mumford

Husband-and-wife team Tim Payne and Melissa Newell moved to Colorado from Jackson Hole, Wyo., in late 2007. Tim had been the executive chef at Earth & Vine’s Wine Bistro; Melissa had worked as a clinical registered dietician. Both of them came from families that felt it was important to grow your own food when you could, eat seasonally when possible, and preserve the rest for later. They grew into hard-working, no-frills folks who loved to share good food with people and dreamed of a restaurant of their own where they could do just that.

Melissa Newell and Tim Payne, owners of Terroir, offer food that is fresh, flavorful and very often local.

Their dream came true with Terroir, a “new American” restaurant that opened in January in downtown Longmont. With its growing population, strong farmers’ markets in Longmont and Boulder, and a number of reputable farms and producers nearby, Longmont was just the place to open a white-tablecloth restaurant featuring locally and organically grown produce. The French word terroir loosely means “sense or taste of place,” and usually refers to wine grapes and the soil and other characteristics specific to each wine region.

“You don’t have to dress up your food with heavy sauces when your produce is picked at its peak of freshness,” Payne says. “This is what we’re driven by—to give people the taste of what a tomato, for example, really tastes like.”

Finding a Home

Payne and Newell found an ideal location right away—an historic brick building at Third and Main. The ground floor previously housed a Creole restaurant with large murals and bright lighting. Melissa painted the walls in soothing green and neutral colors and decorated the walls with photographs of local farms.

Tim, who does double duty as Terroir’s executive chef and pastry chef, attended a Cordon Bleu program at the Scottsdale Culinary Institute in Phoenix. His hands-on experience comes from years spent cooking and baking professionally. He works long hours making everything from scratch—filled pasta (which changes daily), aioli, focaccia, gnocchi, ice cream, even chocolate truffles. “We don’t use any ‘convenience foods,’ so we’re here working early and late, and it helps to have a really good staff,” he says.

Payne and his staff make everything from scratch, like the gnocchi served in a buttery vegetable-and-white-wine broth with snow peas and Parmesan.

Tim prides himself on knowing exactly where all his food comes from. “Our No. 1 priority is local first. If we can’t source it locally, then it has to be organic,” he says. He buys produce and meat from local farms such as Grower’s Organic, Haystack Mountain Goat Dairy, Osage Gardens, Hazel Dell Mushrooms, White Mountain Farm and Wisdom Farms. In addition to that, Tim estimates that Terroir’s fare is 75 percent organic. The seafood is wild and sustainably harvested, not farm raised.

Keeping Prices Low

Another value that’s important to this couple is affordability. “That’s one of the reasons we moved to Longmont,” says Melissa. “Our rent is about a third of what it would cost in Boulder, so we can spend more on the ingredients, and still keep our prices reasonable for our customers.” The price range is $8-$12 at lunch and $13-$22 for entrées at dinner.

With such a strong emphasis placed on local, organic and seasonal foods, the menu at Terroir changes often. Tim is always enthusiastic about the daily filled house-made pasta, but another one of his recent favorites was the pan-seared sea scallops, served with a mango coulis, snow peas, angel hair pasta and shrimp. Melissa’s recent favorite was the stuffed peppers filled with black beans, sweet corn and a red pepper risotto, although she had difficulty choosing between that, the gnocchi—pastalike potato dumplings, served with snow peas and shallots—and the frisée salad, which is a tall pile of those chicory-like greens, with blue cheese, roasted apples, Long Family Farm bacon, shallots and a red-wine vinaigrette.

Terroir's Beef Duo pairs veal cheek with Colorado’s Best top sirloin, raised on Jay Road. A red-wine sauce, grilled asparagus and polenta triangle round out the plate.

Desserts are simple at Terroir, and very flavor driven. “It’s not ornamental here—there’s no shock value,” says Tim. There’s always a crisp on the menu, mostly because Tim loved them as a kid, as well as a crème brûlée, a semifreddo (a dish made with frozen meringue and whipped cream), and a tasting of house-made truffles.

Terroir is open for dinner every evening but Sunday, and for lunch Tuesday through Saturday. The lunch menu offers the same small plates as dinner, plus a few sandwiches. “It’s a great place for a business lunch. There’s no TV, so it’s nice and quiet,” says Melissa. She too has many years of experience as a server and manager in various restaurants and food and beverage specialty shops. She handles the front of the house and is responsible for the wine list. She buys wine one case at time, offering a frequently changing, short but painstakingly chosen list.

Melissa’s main goal is finding affordable wines. “We want people to be able to enjoy a glass or bottle of wine with their food—the two are designed to go hand in hand.” She also tries to offer wines that can’t be found elsewhere in Longmont, so wine education is important at Terroir. Every day at 4 p.m., the entire staff sits down to a family meal to taste and learn about the food and wine they’ll serve that evening. “It’s working,” Melissa says. “When we first opened, people often hadn’t heard of a particular wine before. Now they’re coming back and asking for that wine again.”

Tim shares her satisfaction with Terroir’s success so far. “We’re not striving for fame or fortune. It’s just all about the taste,” he says. “And the community.”

Terroir, at 246 Main St., Longmont, 303-651-0630, www.terroir-restaurant.com, is open Tues-Sat for lunch 11am-2pm and Mon-Sat for dinner 5-10pm. Reservations are accepted for parties of all sizes.

Kuvy Ax has lived in Boulder most of her adult life, but grew up in England, which helps her appreciate Boulder’s restaurants all the more. She loves cooking, taking cooking classes, talking about food, reading culinary magazines and planning her next meal.

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