Boulder, Colorado, is a college town with a strong bohemian flavor-Birkenstocks and mountain bikes are best-sellers-which explains the success of Modmarket, a strip-mall outlet serving organic salads, sandwiches, and pizza. The award-winning Denver firm of Roth Sheppard Architects was inspired by a farmers’ market selling produce from a row of stalls.

They emphasized the linearity of the skinny storefront with a long counter and a hundred-foot-long banquette on the facing wall, and used a white palette to set off the wholesome, freshly prepared ingredients. Drywall arches over the bamboo tables and canopies the Corian serving counter, which is faced with white Astroturf. A wall slot frames a fringe of fake grass that’s convincingly green. Natural light from tubular skylights washes over the walls and polished concrete floor, and the effect is replicated by inset pin spots after dark.

There is nothing extraneous: the space is sleek, functional, and cool-a home away from home for the iPad generation. Like Apple, the architects have avoided the clinical. One might assume that an all-white décor would work only for a refined, white-tablecloth restaurant, but it proves equally suitable to a casual eatery that gets a lot of hard use.

During the lunch rush there’s a cheerful bustle akin to an open-air market in the interaction of servers and customers lining up for their orders. “Most of our restaurants distill the essence of the menu,” says design principal Jeff Sheppard, “and here we tried to communicate the purity and honesty of the locally sourced foodstuffs.”

Anthony Pigliacampo, the founder of Modmarket, explains the importance of the design. “We relied on the architects’ thoughtful understanding of restaurant psychology and their inventive minimalist approach,” he says. “The space has become one of our main marketing tools-it sets us apart from the competition and creates a visual environment that sticks in people’s minds.”