Glens Falls Business Journal
Editor’s Note: This article was published May 14. Scratch Kitchen announced its new 21 Ridge St. location would open May 18.
By Carol Ann Conover
After two years building a loyal following out of a compact cafe on Warren Street, Scratch Kitchen owner and executive chef Denver Semon is trading her 12-seat dining room for a 70-seat space at 21 Ridge St., putting her squarely in the middle of what she calls a growing restaurant hub in downtown Glens Falls.
The move, approved by the Glens Falls Planning Board earlier this year, marks a significant step for a chef who has spent more than two decades at the stoves of some of the region’s most recognized kitchens, including The Sagamore, the Aviator Restaurant in Queensbury and Flight Wine Bar & Restaurant in Glens Falls, before striking out on her own in the spring of 2024.
“I’ve wanted to open my own place for a long time, but it, you know, financially it wasn’t feasible or, you know, many reasons,” Semon said. “It’s scary to get into the restaurant business. It’s a lot, a lot of overhead and not a lot of rewards sometimes. But I’m just like, if I’m gonna work that hard, I think I’m going to do it for myself.”
The Warren Street location, while beloved, imposed hard limits. With seating for roughly a dozen and a kitchen built for one, Semon couldn’t accommodate the volume her growing customer base demanded.
“I have such a small kitchen. It was really only, only me. So it made it difficult. We couldn’t do the business that we wanted to do,” she said. “So, I knew after two years we were going to have to find something larger, which is an awesome, awesome problem.”
The new Ridge Street location had served as a restaurant for most of its history. Previous tenants include Fiddleheads, Black Watch and most recently Birch Bark Eatery, the vegan restaurant whose owner relocated to Albany, before the space was used as an event venue for about two years. The existing hood and infrastructure meant Semon’s build-out focused on outfitting the kitchen with new commercial equipment and refreshing the dining room and bathrooms, rather than undertaking structural work.
The interior aesthetic, Semon said, drew inspiration from the existing light fixtures. “Nicki, who’s the manager at my other little shop, she’s come along with me,” she said, referring to manager Nicki Loiselle, with whom she is also discussing a future partnership. “She looks up at the lights that were here and they have like a copper undertone and we’re like, we really like that copper, like kind of turquoise look.” The team settled on a wallpaper that anchored a palette pulled from Scratch Kitchen’s existing logo. Semon described the evening atmosphere as dark and moody. “Accessible elegance,” she called it, borrowing a phrase that came up during the interview. “Nobody’s going to feel like they can’t be here, but it’s going to be a nice space.”
The restaurant will open first for breakfast and lunch, maintaining the menu of house-made breads, sandwiches, salads, pastries and specialty coffee that built Scratch Kitchen’s reputation on Warren Street. Semon plans to phase in dinner service, tentatively beginning in June, with a small-plates concept drawing on Spanish, Asian and American regional culinary traditions.
“I would like to do like a tapas style menu, but with a few signatures,” Semon said. “Smaller plates, lots of sharing kinds of foods — we’re probably going to change that menu constantly, like weekly, with seasonal food. I love the farm-to-table kind of thing.”
Semon credits chef David Britton — a mentor she met during her years at The Sagamore and later worked with at Springwater Bistro and Saratoga Polo — with shaping her affinity for Spanish cuisine and its ingredients. That influence, along with her time at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, where she graduated in 1998 with an associate degree in culinary arts, underpins a cooking philosophy that resists being boxed in.
“I love the whole international — I love Spanish food,” she said. “With dinner service, I think that’s really going to be able to come out to play.”
The Ridge Street space also features a small bar, and Semon has begun the application process for a liquor license, with the intention of offering beer, wine and a specialty cocktail menu on dinner nights. In the interim, she plans to develop a mocktail program. Saturday brunch — which she piloted at the Warren Street location — will be expanded, and she is considering adding live acoustic music on a rotating weekly or biweekly basis during the warmer months.
Semon also plans to sell artisan breads through a front-window display, building on the sourdough and house-made roll program she established at Warren Street. Online ordering for breakfast and lunch, along with DoorDash delivery, is in development for the website at scratchgardenskitchen.com.
The expansion comes at a propitious moment for the city. Downtown Glens Falls has undergone a sustained revitalization, anchored in part by the completion of the South Street Market Center — a project that leveraged a $9.7 million Downtown Revitalization Initiative grant from New York state into more than $48 million in total investment, according to the governor’s office. SUNY Adirondack’s culinary campus on Hudson Street has added another dimension to the city’s culinary identity, and a growing roster of independent restaurants has positioned the downtown as a regional dining destination in its own right.
“I feel like Glens Falls is kind of getting like… it’s becoming… we’re coming into our, you know, a place people go to on purpose,” Semon said. “I love that I get to be part of that, like to bring that kind of momentum to the area.”
Semon’s husband, Martin Semon, a former culinary professional who now works as a carpenter at Great Escape, has contributed labor and custom built-ins to the Ridge Street build-out. In addition to Nicki, Semon said the front-of-house team is largely staffed by people who have worked with her previously, and she continues to accept applications.
As of the interview, Scratch Kitchen was awaiting a building and codes inspection and a health inspection before receiving its certificate of occupancy and setting an official opening date. Semon said the restaurant is otherwise ready to open.
“We’re ready, we’re ready to go,” she said. “We just need those two things.”
Scratch Kitchen’s new location at 21 Ridge St. will share the block with Farmacy and Radici Kitchen and Bar. For updates, visit scratchgardenskitchen.com or follow the restaurant on Facebook.