For someone whose most recent employment involved safety oversight, Denise Ferguson is admittedly out of her comfort zone in her new career.
Fortunately for local foodies — including the new shop’s owner — that new career is creating delectable dishes.
Early December marked the one-month mark for the Riverhouse Bakery & Café, a shop at 120 W. Bell Street, serving up both savory and sweet treats to the breakfast and lunch crowd.
For weeks, Ferguson had been in conversation with the landlord of the available commercial space near Sequim’s downtown core, despite not having an extensive business background.
“[The landlord] was interested in my vision,” Ferguson said, “Excellent food, excellent service, in a place where people can hang out.”
Sequim Gazette photo by Michael Dashiell / Enjoy breakfast and lunch items at the Riverhouse Bakery & Café, open 7 a.m.-3 p.m. daily at 120 W. Bell St.
The rotating, extensive menu includes desserts such as cheesecake, bread pudding and various pies, cinnamon rolls, scones and more.
The breakfast menu in early December included biscuits and gravy, a butternut squash hash and corned beef hash, three varieties of omelets, The Riverhouse breakfast (two eggs, potatoes, toast and choice of meat) and sides, with salads, soups (navy bean and ham, vegan chili and a soup of the day) and nine different kinds of sandwiches for the lunch crowd.
Ferguson said she stresses using quality ingredients in her creations, such as putting her BLTs on brioche buns and using thick-sliced bacon.
“I’m a foodie; I love good food,” she said.
“I want to make sure the food people are paying for is good.”
Many of the menu items are based on old family recipes, including the cinnamon roll dough, and an already-popular carrot cake based on an 80-year-old recipe from Poland that Ferguson received from her ex-mother-in-law.
Sequim Gazette photo by Michael Dashiell / Many of the menu items at Riverhouse Bakery & Café are family recipes, such as the dough from this popular cinnamon roll.
Some of Ferguson’s favorites are the Reuben for meals, and German chocolate bread pudding for dessert.
Much of the food she said, should be “light and fluffy — like me … and something like home.”
Origin story
Opening the Riverhouse was daunting for Ferguson, a Washington state native who spent the past four years in Hawaii. Originally from Edmonds, she said she had a tough beginning, spending some time living on the streets and years as a single parent.
She also served in the U.S. Coast Guard for four years before her most recent employ: supervising safety procedures and practices in Hawaii.
The climate agreed with her, Ferguson said, but the work itself didn’t.
“I’m so cold [back in Washington state] all the time,” Ferguson said. “I learned a lot about who I was, what I wanted there.”
So when her husband, a Kalama native, found work at McKinley Paper Company in Port Angeles, Ferguson was back in Washington state.
Sequim Gazette photo by Michael Dashiell / Riverhouse Bakery & Café owner Denise Ferguson, right, and staffers Brandon Spivey and Maria Flores prepare food for the lunchtime crowd last week.
With limited safety jobs on the Peninsula, Ferguson began baking and eventually started selling gluten-free scones and other goods in the marketplace. A friend suggested she get a brick-and-mortar shop going, but other than working in restaurants as a waitress and bartender she’d never been involved in the restaurant business — certainly not on the business end.
“I’d never done that before,” she said.
But she knew what kind of food she liked and figured others might, too, getting suggestions for menu items on Facebook
Following talks with the landlord of the space on West Bell, formerly home to Galare Thai, Ferguson signed the lease on Oct. 1. Putting in the work with her husband to renovate the space, the Riverhouse opened Nov. 13 and hosted a ribbon-cutting with the Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce on Dec. 1.
Open 7 a.m.-3 p.m. daily, the bakery/café is named after Ferguson’s home off River Road and is designed to be a place where people feel comfortable spending some time.
“It turned out exactly like I envisioned,” Ferguson said, noting she already sees some people coming in four days a week.
“This is exactly where I would hang out.”
Sequim Gazette photo by Michael Dashiell / Enjoy breakfast and lunch items at the Riverhouse Bakery & Café, open 7 a.m.-3 p.m. daily at 120 W. Bell St.
One Monday, she said, there were people lined up to get in at the opening, surprising her and her staff.
Ferguson said she’s trying to keep a family-like atmosphere at her business, which employs four servers, a baker/prepper and one cook, with a second recently hired. She said she has to step in to fill staffing roles, and that she gives her workers the authority to take care of customers and their needs without micro-managing them.
“I’ve worked at some terrible places; I don’t want to be that person,” she said.
“We have to be family. We have to take care of each other.”
For more about the Riverhouse Bakery & Cafe, visit facebook.com/p/River-House-Bakery-Cafe- 100090982963615, email to Riverhousebakery@gmail.com or call 360-865-2870.
Riverhouse Bakery & Cafe
Where: 120 W. Bell St.
Hours: 7 a.m.-3 p.m. 7 days a week
On the web: facebook.com/p/River-House-Bakery-Cafe-100090982963615
Contact: 360-865-2870, Riverhousebakery@gmail.com
