I Praise and Give Thanks To You Palaeortyx!

I love a good ritual, especially ones that revolve around food, and especially those that involve meat! I guess it's the nerd in me that got really excited when I made the obvious connection that our most beloved bird has dinosaur ancestors.

Specifically, Palaeortyx! Palaeortyx, lived in the Eocene Epoch 56 to 34 million years ago, when another familiar order was making it's debut...stinky, dirty, fucking primates...bizarre.

Palaeortyx gave rise to an order of birds called Galliformes, which include chickens, grouse, quails, pheasants, and...drum roll please...the majestic turkey.

The pilgrims were too busy stealing from the natives to write cookbooks, but here's an American recipe for roast fowl from 1590, so it's pretty damn likely that the pilgrims would have done something along these lines:

"Prepare them to trusse; then make a farcing meat with marrow or beefe filet, with the liver of the fowle minced very small; and mix it with grated bread, the yolkes of hard eggs minced, Mace and Nutmeg beat, the tops of Thyme minced very small, and Salt; incorporate all these together with hard eggs and Verjuice, then cut the skin off the fowle betwixt the legs and the body, before it is trussed, and put in your finger to raise the skin from the flesh, but take care you break not the skin; then farce it full with this meat, and trusse the leggs close to keep in this meat; then spit them and roast them, sitting a dish under to save the gravy, which mixe with a little Claret, sliced Nutmeg, a little of that farced meat, and Salt; then give it two or three Walms on the fire, and beat it up thick with the yolk of a raw egg and a peice of Butter, with a little minc'd Lemmon and serve it up in the dish with the fowle."

The New and Improved Greenhouse Grille.

Here's another restaurant that's making Fayetteville proud, with hippy sensibilities and a penchant for locavorism. The new space is lightyears ahead of the old dark and dingy ex-Greek restaurant by Pizza Hut. It was hard to take them seriously and appreciate their food before, and I hate to be so damn shallow, but the new place really shines a whole new light on Greenhouse Grille. They've moved into Wilma's old spot, and before Wilma's it was Mason de Tarte, which I'm surprised didn't have more longevity. Anyway, the new space is very..um...spacious. It's in up and coming South Fayetteville, (Hillbilly Williamsburg) located adjacent to the mill building, and the restaurant's parking lot is home to the Thursday Fayetteville Farmers Market...surprise..surprise. That's a shocker right, hippy restaurant with a farmers market in the parking lot? I was thoroughly impressed with the organic and natural hand soap in the restrooms, and natural Blue Sky soda selection. Really got me primed for the experience and in touch with my inner flower child.

It's decorated well, and they've spent some time thinking about the acoustics. There were cool little Bose cube speakers throughout, and these weird foam acoustic dampening things in all the corners. They feature live music on the weekends, and looked like they have events going on all through the week too. Fairly big names, if you're hip to the jamband scene.

I'm usually not one for hippy restaurants, but this place is more than just sprout sandwiches on multi grain bread and a juice bar. How many hippy restaurants do you know of where you can get an organic filet mignon over a bed of lobster risotto? Not too many I'd be willing to bet, at least not in NWA, and if you do know of another place, introduce me to your dealer because you're smoking primo shit.

I had a Fred Flintstone sized organic pork chop, with a wild mushroom and stone ground mustard crust. It was amazing, honestly the best pork chop that I have EVER had. It was cooked perfectly, still a little pink inside and exceedingly tender. This pork actually had flavor, thank god it wasn't just the other white meat!! Even though this pork had natural flavor, let's face it pork can be a little bland, so the crust was a perfect salty, sour, crusty counterpoint, to the pork's juicy tenderness. My pork chop was served with super creamy bourbon sweet potatoes, and super fresh sauteed sugar snap peas. It was refreshing having a pureed starch for a change, the sweet potato puree was super silky and smooth. "Textured" or "Chunky" starches are way to 90's.

My girlfriend had the buffalo strip steak, which was cooked well, but a little on the gristly side. It was served with roasted garlic mashed potatoes, textured or rustic or chunky, or whatever the hell you want to call them. The sweet roasted garlic in the potatoes made up for their being overly chunky.

Our friend had the lemon infused meatloaf, with mashed potatoes. I didn't taste it, but he said it tasted like someone got a little over zealous with the lemons and the micro plane grater. His girlfriend had the organic grass fed filet mignon over lobster risotto, he also mentioned to her that she would owe him certain favors later after ordering the most expensive thing on the menu...wink..wink..nod..nod. I tasted the risotto, it had a nice lobster flavor, and an adequate amount of lobster. Although, I'm not sure how local the lobster was, they failed to comment on that.

The above dishes were all on their specials menu, so they were doing sort of a fall/winter comfort food thing. Definitely nice to see some seasonality also. There's nothing worse than being served tomatoes in mid November.

Like all hippy restaurants, Greenhouse Grille has been seduced by the siren song of their most coveted spice...cumin. It was featured PROMINENTLY in almost every dish. I feared for a moment that they might slip some cumin in my beer.

The service was better than expected, our waitress was professional and attentive, not too spacey or weird. The table was set The prices were fair, we had several pricey organic unfiltered beers of course, and our bill was $76, not including tip.

Overall Greenhouse Grille is a must. They're doing all the right things: local, sustainable, organic, with class. Greenhouse Grille is definitely a good trip..wink..wink..nod..nod.