By Kadie Taylor | The Observer
AUBURN — The Depot is celebrating its 10-year anniversary at the end of September, and is using the event as a reason to celebrate its years of menu development and community connection.
“Our 10-year anniversary is coming up the week of Sept. 22, which is a Monday,” said Executive Chef, Founder and Part Owner of The Depot, Scott Simpson. “So we’re taking that day, and we’re all coming in and doing some special preparations, and each day during that week we’ll be doing something spectacular.
“Just being open for 10 years is a huge cause for celebration,” Simpson said. “It’s rare for a restaurant to go that long without having to completely redo everything or change something about it. On top of that, we weathered the COVID era, which was extremely tough, and it kind of helped transform our business to have some more little ways that we can provide services.”
For the Majority Owner of The Depot, Matt Poirier, he is thankful for how the Depot has evolved, the support of the community and good employees.
“Everybody’s kind of grown over the 10 years, the community has been very supportive and then the city has been very supportive of this partnership,” he said. “We have some really wonderful regulars that we’ve gotten to know over the years, people that dine in the restaurant, at least once a week. We’ve also had some great, really wonderful employees over the years.”
Simpson said as he cultivates creative dishes, those who visit The Depot are able to have an experience that makes them feel at home or like a world-traveler.
“People who are from the Auburn community get a chance to come in for dinner and travel through meals, through flavors, through authentic cooking techniques and ingredients to more adventurous locations,” he said. “Then also, the people that are coming through, whether it be for a game or something else, are able to experience some regional flavors.”
With The Depot being known as a seafood restaurant, Simpson said items, like their known oysters, are a way to explore creative flavors.
“What makes us so continuously exciting and captivating is that the menu features fresh oysters, a variety of whatever is freshest, whatever is best and the perfect oysters from the East, West and Gulf Coast,” he said. “So we always have oysters on Thursday nights. We have a lot of fun trying different things and landing on some items that we feel the guest is going to tell me, ‘this is better than the oysters Rockefeller,’ ‘I always order in New Orleans but this is the best grilled oyster I ever had’ and ‘who thought of this combination.’ Those oysters are an outlet for more creativity.”
Along with seafood, Simpson said The Depot also has a variety of other foods that customers enjoy for those who enjoy the turf over the surf, as well as those who do not eat meat.
“If you look at Google, you’ll see that we were nominated for Top Vegetarian Restaurant because people are able to put together all the different international side dishes into a complete meal, very easily,” he said. “And if you read our recent reviews, someone just wrote and said, ‘This is hands down, the best steak I’ve ever had in my life, by far, the best steak in Alabama.’ I think we’re still somewhat under the radar in that sense that people don’t even know that we’re something more than seafood.”
Simpson said that many customers who visit The Depot frequently began to bring him different foods from their gardens, and it inspired him to begin working with local farmers and gardeners to incorporate their foods into The Depot menu.
“It just inspired me to do Your Farm to Our Table,” he said. “We’re looking at their practices and the sanitation levels and everything else to see if they’re a good source. I wanted to sort of shake the trees, so to speak, to get the fruit, and I wanted to talk to the guests to say, ‘If you have anything, I’d love to see it and know that it grows locally successfully.’ I want to experiment with it, and maybe there’s a way we can start to use that as a resource in the restaurant.”
The Depot also has a provisions market where customers can purchase items that they might not otherwise have access to locally.
“They can’t get this Wagyu beef from Australia from the local Walmart, and so we have all these different products, different levels of caviar, different wines that we can pair for them,” Simpson said. “We have a lot of homemade things that we just put together with the chef’s touch, where people can have chef-prepared meals that are ready to go. It’s incredible how much of the banana foster creme brulee pudding that we sell.”
As the chefs at The Depot develop their creative menu for customers, they have received positive reviews and have both a Yelp and a TripAdvisor award.
“The Yelp award is big because there’s only one in every state, and if you look at the restaurants and all the other states, you would know them immediately,” Simpson said. “So for our restaurant to be in that category is really good; it obviously says something about our standards and the guest experience here. So, TripAdvisor does awards based on surveys, and it’s a small, small percentage of the restaurants that they get such high ratings that they give them what’s called the Travelers’ Choice Awards. They would say these represent the top of the world, and I feel pretty comfortable saying that, according to them, we’re one of the top restaurants in the United States.”
Throughout 10 years of working with Auburn University students, Simpson said he enjoys investing in students and watching them grow.
“A lot of people who start working here are with us for the money, and then they grow and learn and have the experience of being part of our team,” he said. “It’s a family-owned and operated business, and we bond very well. We do things together. The staff hangs out together, and some get married. Probably the greatest satisfaction for me is, as a chef, to teach people, mentor people, develop people and to see people start in one place and then grow.”
Poirier said he ultimately wants to thank the community for all of their support over the past 10 years, and he looks forward to many more anniversaries for The Depot.
“I want to thank the community for 10 years of support, and in that we look forward to 10 more and meeting more new customers,” he said. “We’re striving to be the best restaurant in the area, and that’s what we want to do. So that’s the most important thing, as 10 years approaches, to be thankful for the city and thankful to the community for their support.”
For more information, visit The Depot on Facebook or www.allaboardauburn.com
