Sauvage Is a Cajun-Gourmet Food Truck Serving Indulgent Dishes like Chicken and Beignets

Forest Ragar started cooking in Lafayette, Louisiana, during college, and loosely entertained the idea of pursuing a culinary career for years, but he had to overcome some personal struggles before fully realizing his potential and launching Sauvage, his Cajun-gourmet food truck.

"I kind of had some not so great years partying and just getting into craziness through college and whatnot," he admits. "I went to a couple of rehabs out in California and turned my life around, cleaned up and started living a healthy lifestyle."

Rehab also helped Ragar truly discover his passion for cooking. As he progressed in his sobriety, the rehab facility noticed that he was hanging around the kitchen a lot and offered him a position as a cook. "I get into the kitchen, you know, it's fast and hot and people are yelling; it's intense. I just get this feeling of relief and that it's where I'm supposed to be," Ragar explains.

Soon he was told about a new facility that the rehab had opened outside of Las Vegas, where a chef was needed to help run the kitchen. After transferring, he met a girl from Colorado who suggested they take a trip to her home state together. "After we visited a couple of times, I'm like, 'What are we doing in the desert? Let's get the hell out of here,'" he recalls.

He made the move in 2012 and bounced around a few kitchens before landing a promising job at vegan eatery Watercourse Foods. "I kind of came in as a great fit and had the opportunity to make my own kitchen. ... There was a lot of opportunity to improve the vegan food scene. I was able to bring some freshness and pizzazz, and I learned a lot about conducting teams and communication," Ragar says.
After his tenure at Watercourse, Ragar connected with the owners of Piante, a plant-based pizzeria in Breckenridge. "They had a mobile pizza oven, and I started doing their mobile pizza oven here in Denver for them while they worked in Breckenridge, so that was my first mobile cooking experience. I was taking that around, booking it and learning about the food truck scene," explains Ragar. "I didn't know I was doing recon for my own gig at that point, but I sure as shit was."

Then the pandemic hit, changing Ragar's trajectory.

To pass the time, he began hosting friends for dinner on a weekly basis, one of whom told him about a food truck for sale. He pulled enough funds to purchase the truck and officially launched Sauvage (French for "wild" or "untamed") in January 2021.

Ragar partnered with Miller Farms and initially focused on serving plant-based foods. "I was gonna do superfoods, like macro nutrient bowls and stuff like that, because I was in this healthy, super-conscious space, but I'm so glad I changed my mind and decided to do the most indulgent food," he says. "Just like, fuck all the rules and make the stuff that everybody wants to eat but is not always around."
Now Sauvage serves dishes like chicken and beignets, a spin on chicken and waffles. "It's not like a classic beignet," Ragar notes. "I call them 'alpine beignets' because they are more like a puff pastry. We take chicken thigh meat and batter them up with a Creole kind of maple butter sauce and deep-fry." He also serves the beignets as a dessert, paired with rotating sweet sauces. Other indulgent items include a hot Cajun chicken sandwich and the Royale Burger made with local grass-fed beef.

As Ragar looks toward the future, he wants to expand the catering side of the business and possibly open a cloud kitchen. However, his ultimate goal is to establish a brick-and-mortar. "A Miller Farms-to-table restaurant, for me to put like a front to the farm," he explains. "That's kind of my next goal, because a chef is only as good as his ingredients."

You can find Sauvage at 855 Lawrence Way on the Auraria campus every Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. For more information and to find out where else the truck will be serving, follow it on Instagram @sauvagefoodtruck.