Inside Danielle’s Scratch Kitchen in Castle Rock | Pinpoint Colorado

This week on Pinpoint Colorado, host Rachel Mains visits Danielle’s Scratch Kitchen in Castle Rock for a conversation with co-owner Todd Walker. Known for its scratch-made menu, fresh ingredients, warm hospitality, and inviting atmosphere, Danielle’s has become a standout local restaurant with a strong heart for both food and community. 

In this episode, Todd shares what makes Danielle’s unique, from its commitment to quality ingredients and Italian-inspired culinary passion to its focus on loving people, training great staff, and creating a dining experience that keeps customers coming back. The conversation also highlights the restaurant’s clean food approach, strong gluten-free options, and dedication to serving Castle Rock with excellence.

Learn more: https://www.daniellesscratchkitchen.com 

Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pinpointcolorado 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

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SPEAKER_02 0:43

Welcome to Pinpoint, Colorado. I'm your host, Rachel Maines. This week we're featuring Danielle Scratch Kitchen in Castle Rock. It's a local restaurant that's known for its scratch made menu, warm hospitality, and inviting atmosphere. Coming up, I'll sit down with restaurant co-owner Todd Walker for a behind-the-scenes look at what makes this restaurant so special. Let's go inside. Well, thank you, Todd, for letting me come down here. I love this restaurant. I've been here one time before, and it's just really unique.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Yeah, thanks for coming down. We we you know we're real proud of what we've done here. We're real proud of the food we serve and the way we serve it, and think that it's something very special for this uh this little corner of Colorado.

SPEAKER_02 1:38

And there's only one restaurant like this in the nation.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

That's right. That's right. Right here.

SPEAKER_02 1:43

What are some of the key things that you're like this really makes us stand out, makes us be unique?

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Yeah. I think number one, we're a scratch kitchen. So everything we possibly can bring in fresh and and and and bring in here, we bring in the best ingredients, the freshest ingredients, and uh, and and you know, our chefs do their magic to put that all together here to serve what we think is the best food around. And uh um that's that's probably the number one thing is the quality of the food. But but if I were to say uh anything else, it's that you know, we as a restaurant, we really have two what we call rules in our restaurant. The first one is that we love people. Um we we and not just our guests, but for sure our guests, but also each other. And we think that that shows in our cooking. You know, my business partner who's who's our like food guru, always says he can tell if something's cooked with love or not. And uh, and you can taste the love uh in the food. And that's very Italian, you know. So he's a very Italian from Long Island, and so there's uh there's that there's that uh spirit, I think, uh in the restaurant of we're gonna we're gonna love people. And then our second rule as a restaurant is everybody has to try. So if we love people and we try, we think we create something really special here for the for the folks down here in Castle Rock.

SPEAKER_02 2:55

I love that. And Colorado's a unique state, and we're a foodie state, and so it's fun to be here, I'm sure, as a restaurant um owner in in the restaurant business. Um describe your cuisine.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Uh it's Italian American, and so uh we call ourselves Casual Fine Dining, um, but uh most of our food is um uh real real um, like I said, the best ingredients and and and you know put together with with uh um over just years of of putting it together, putting our menu together to kind of to kind of craft a a menu that that everyone loves and that that the food is, you know, just even looking at our reviews, you can kind of see that the the food really is is what makes this place special. Right. It really is what makes you know, it's a restaurant, right? So that's what you want. You want great food. And uh and that's what we've we've really done over years of just not settling and just setting that high standard of food and and the quality of our food and the taste of our food.

SPEAKER_02 3:56

Yeah, they love we love food, we're foodies here in the atmosphere too, and what you created in terms of the atmosphere, I say, is unique as well. Soon the patio is going to be opening, which is great. And you were mentioning prior to um us doing the interview that your patio is is quite unique.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Yeah, it's a beautiful patio. It's uh it's one of the things that makes it unique is it's really hard to find a patio that's as big as ours, that's uh that isn't by a road where it doesn't have traffic, it's it's just kind of got a beautiful, peaceful, calm, especially in the spring and summer when it's so green out there. It's really beautiful and just a wonderful place to eat and have drinks and spend time together.

SPEAKER_02 4:32

Yeah.

unknown 4:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:33

Yeah, it's nice to sit on a patio and have a nice glass of wine and some good food. So that's something to look forward to this summer for sure. What's your favorite thing or a couple items on the menu that you're that are your favorites?

SPEAKER_01 4:46

I think our Southern Fried Chicken, we do this with a bourbon gravy sauce that is just absolutely fabulous. Um our uh our halibut right now is is is pretty pretty good and something that everybody will really love. I mean, our goal is to have wow food, and every one of our dishes should be a wow dish. Every one of our dishes, when you take that first bite, should make you go, oh wow. Right. That's that's really good. And so everything on our menu, on our menu is fabulous. Um, you know, I really like our wild salmon. I think our salmon is is is just as good as it gets. And the and you know, the the the way we uh plate it cook and everything is just real real good.

SPEAKER_02 5:21

Well, being a scratch kitchen too and um having the the vendors that are just perfect vendors, how did you guys go about searching your vendors?

SPEAKER_01 5:32

A lot of time. Like, like you that's a great question because that really is uh you know part of the secret sauce is figuring out what what is not every vendor has everything great. Right. So you have to, you know, you know, find a bakery up in Denver that's gonna that's gonna bake for us, and you know, we and some of it we do ourselves, but you know, finding a bakery that will you know bake our ciabata bread and and make sure it's fresh and and made just for us, um, some of that kind of stuff, and finding the different venues with with that may may only have one or two ingredients that that are right for us, but that we're just very particular about you know having and having in in-house to make our dishes.

SPEAKER_02 6:08

Right. In Colorado, like we were saying, we were alluding to, is a foodie um state. So I'm sure we have more options than a lot of states here, and we have good food. And people here care about the food, they care about having healthy food. Um food source too is really important here.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

Clean food. And so our food is clean. We're very good at gluten-free, uh, something that we really specialize in. Um way back, one of our early chefs had a celiac sun, kind of put us on that path, and we've just kind of gone with it. It's something that we really specialize in. We do almost everything on our menu, we can do gluten-free. And so, anybody out there that's gluten-free, we're a we're a great option for them because it's something that we know how to do and we do very well.

SPEAKER_02 6:47

Yeah, that's very important here in Colorado. Um, with the chefs, you alluded to that, but how do you pick your chef? I'm sure it's, of course, someone who knows how to cook very well, but what other aspects do you look for in a chef?

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Well, uh, we we're again what's a great question because that's also the secret sauce of a restaurant, is to make sure you have the right chefs. And we're fortunate. We have a a head chef that has is pretty much homegrown. So he came here, started out on our grill, um, went to saute, became a sous chef, um, and then has been our head chef now for about five years. He's been with us about eight years, and we've only been open 10 years. So we yeah, so we've we we're very fortunate that we have uh someone that's been with us through all of our evolution, you know, through all of our growing pains and all that stuff, and knows our dishes, knows our food, and helped develop a lot. So uh we're really we're really fortunate like that. And then of course, um uh my my business partners is father, they're what I call my menu gurus. They're the ones that um that really flesh out our menu and develop our menu. Uh uh they've been in the restaurant business, you know, 40 years, and so they're they really know their food and are able to um kind of just make sure it's it's the techniques are all really important. It's really because you if you just do one little thing wrong, though you change the whole dish. And just getting that that that balance, that that flavor balance uh on each and every dish just right every time, that's the hard part, is is that that those chefs and those cooks don't um don't get used to it, but they stay, they stay, they're passionate, and and they are. They stay passionate about making great food, and that's really what we look for. We look for people that that want to cook the best food, right? That want to cook great food, that aren't just looking for a job, but are really passionate about cooking. And uh and that's really the team we have back here.

SPEAKER_02 8:27

And that would be fun too. I can imagine, you know, I'm not much of a cook, but I could imagine being a chef, it's like art and being able to present it to your employers and say, hey, you know, this is a new dish and I paired it with this and these kind of spices, you know, that's really art.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

And to do it the same way to make it look amazing and do it the same way where every single time it's is is just what you want perfect, is an art form. It really is an art form. Uh it more so than a lot of things, because it's it's it's so much intuitive. And you know, even though you can do it as a recipe and everything, when you're cooking, it's they're it's very intuitive how they're doing it. There, you know, they're putting the same amount of ingredients in, but they're they're tasting, they're testing, they're you know, getting their getting their uh each dish. Because every dish is scratch made. So it's not like we're we're cooking everything and preheating everything and then just warming it up for people, which is what a lot of your like you know cookie cutter franchises are doing. They're just shipping in food, warming it up, serving it. Everything's cooked directly from scratch, right there in the pan, and that that really is an art form.

SPEAKER_02 9:27

Yeah, and that's a lot of hard work. You have to have somebody who's so skilled. And you know, something I really haven't thought about before is I if I come here and I have my favorite dish, and I'm one of those people that I always want to eat my favorite dish, like I find my favorite, and whenever I go to that restaurant, I always order that because I don't want to miss out, you know, if I order something that's not like my absolute favorite.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

So run I run in that all the time, and I always am trying to get people to break out because once they do, they go, Oh, this is my new favorite. Then they try something else, like, oh, this is my new favorite because our food is so good. Yeah. That uh that that there's there's always more than one thing on a menu, on our menu that you love.

SPEAKER_02 10:04

Yeah, that's good to know. And every time you want it to taste the same, you don't want to be like, oh, that's different than last time.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

So that's right. Yeah. That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_02 10:12

What do you look for in terms of your staff? What type of personality or certain characteristics that you look for?

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Yeah, along the same thing lines, I I look for people who who are caring because our first rule is we love people. And if um if I find somebody that has a good heart, then they're gonna love people. Right. And and that's gonna show in how they take care of our guests, that's gonna show in in their attention to detail and all of that, and then and then people who who actually actually care about the food, actually care about cooking, actually care about, or if they don't if they're not in the in the back in the kitchen, but they're up front that actually care about hospitality, that actually care about taking care of people and giving people a great experience. And so that's what I would look for. And we one of the things that's cool about us is uh we hire uh, you know, so many, so many of the of the people we hire are young people right here in Colorado. Yeah. Even teenagers, you know, we have teenagers that um, you know, they'll come to us when they're 15, get get started, and we'll be the only job they have all through high school. Yeah. And they go up to college. I just got a message a moment ago from one of my college kids that's uh up at uh I think he's at Boulder. I don't think he's in four.

SPEAKER_02 11:16

Oh, that's where he went to school.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

Oh, cool, yeah. He's up there and he just messaged me back saying, hey, I'm in town for the weekend if anybody has a shift because he'll work for us this summer. But he was with us all through high school. And yeah, and we've a bunch of kids like that. So it's kind of it's fun to to to not just not just say, Hey, support local, but to actually be local, to to be the kids growing up here, to be the, you know, my servers uh are our local people that have that have most of them have grown up here, and it's just a it's good to like be a Colorado restaurant in that sense.

SPEAKER_02 11:44

In every sense of the way you are.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:46

The scratch kitchen, that's right, the people you hire, being in the community, and you do make a difference being a staple in a community as a restaurant. You know, you're making a difference.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

That's right. And and no, it's so fun because we'll have people that'll come in and have their first date here and then come back and do their anniversary dinners here. You know, they and they want to sit in the same table, they had their first date, and you know, it's fun to do all that because we really feel like this is our home. This is this is our home, this is our community, this is our people, you know. So you wanna you wanna be good to your people.

SPEAKER_02 12:15

Of course, yeah. In every in every sense of the way.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 12:18

Um what are some of the things that you guys do training-wise to kind of obviously you're looking for that heart, that friendliness, love people, but anything in particular that you do training?

SPEAKER_01 12:28

Well, it depends. Um, it depends on yeah, one of the things we like to do is um I'll I'll give a I'll tell you about one of my uh one of my cooks, his name's Roman. Roman started with us at 16 in our dish pit as a dishwasher. Uh at some point we moved him over to our salads and then we move him up to grill, and now he's a saute cook, and you know, he's been with us now for seven years. And uh so raising them up is is one way, one way that we do that. We really like to do that in our kitchen, in our in the when it comes to our servers in front of the house. I want the best. I want people with experience. I want people that that already are great to come in and bring that good heart that have just been looking for a home that they can bring those skills in. So that's uh that's that's kind of how we how how our what our heart is there. And then just the mixture. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:14

Mixture of both. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

And just teaching people that we're passionate about loving people. We really, it's not just words, it's not just a slogan. We're passionate about loving people. And so that's a great, it's one of our great questions that we ask each other is are we doing that in love? Are we cooking in love? Are we serving in love? You know, are we making drinks in love? And if if we do that, we get we get the excellence that that we're passionate about.

SPEAKER_02 13:37

And then you enjoy your job. And that's why also the people stay here. Um, I because I can imagine the restaurant industry, the turnovers, you know, huge usually, but here people are staying here long term.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

The average turnover in a restaurant is seven months for an employee. Wow. And our employees have been here years and years and years because and when we have an opening, people want to come and work here because they know of us, they know we're we're good, and they know we care. Right. And and I, you know, that's what you really want is you want to work someplace where the people care, so then you can care. It's so much more enjoyable to serve people and cook food and and uh and be uh uh hospitable when when you care. Right. You know, and when everyone, the whole team cares. Yeah. And so and that's that's really the spirit of Danielle's is is we really do want to be um you know the local a local place right here in this in this little corner of Colorado, but that is also passionate about giving our people, the people here, the very best, the very best food and the very best service that we possibly can.

SPEAKER_02 14:38

Well, you can definitely see that, and um looking forward to um ordering some future entrees and I'll I'll take some suggestions from you. But for the listeners and the viewers, um your website so they can check out the menu.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

Just go to Danielscratch Kitchen.com and our menus right on there. You can see everything, our drinks, our menu, everything we need.

SPEAKER_02 14:56

And then the hours.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

So we're open on we're open Tuesday through Sunday from 11:30 until eight or nine o'clock. On the weekends we're open at nine, or we take our last table at nine. And on Mondays, we're only we're it's the only day we're not open for lunch. We open uh at four o'clock and we're open until we take our last table at eight o'clock on Mondays.

SPEAKER_02 15:15

Well, thank you so much. This has been a great interview, great place, beautiful, ambiance is amazing, food's amazing, people are amazing. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

Thank you for coming in.

SPEAKER_02 15:24

My thanks to Todd Walker and team at Danielle Scratch Kitchen for joining me today. To learn more and make reservations, go to Danielle Scratch Kitchen.com. And to watch past episodes of Pinpoint Colorado, just go to pinpointcolorado.com. Thanks for joining me, and I'll see you next time.