GALO: In creating dishes for your restaurant, you believe in “the proximity of food and soil to a restaurant correlates directly with its food quality,” and that eco-friendly or green business is vital. We can see this strong thread of sustainability weaved throughout the Greenhouse Tavern, but tell us how you put this into action at your other restaurant, Noodlecat, a mash-up noodlehouse using local ingredients?

JS: We followed similar building practices and we had some leftover building material. We were the first restaurant in Ohio to have these hands-free solar-power flushers installed in our toilets; we had extra ones and moved them over. Also, we had extra accelerators, which are common now. However, five years ago, we were the first restaurant in Ohio to have accelerators, which are hands-free drying from air. Things like that carried over because we just happened to have some of it. Also, we are more familiar with the grading process, so we utilized some of that when we came over to Noodlecat. We already had the infrastructure in place for our composting, biodiesel upcycling, recycling and purchasing practices. Thus, it was a lateral move for us to go from the Greenhouse Tavern to Noodlecat in terms of the sustainability initiatives we follow.

GALO: Here is something else requiring action: catering to a busy lunch rush of guests. Imagine a cohort of Wall Street investment bankers have descended on the Greenhouse Tavern while on a business trip. They are looking to have a family-style quick dinner where they can eat from communal plates (they believe in your menu motto that “bread is meant to be broken between two or four people). Yet, two of them are vegans, and the other two are lactose-intolerant but full-blown carnivores. What would you make them and why?

JS: For the carnivore, lactose-intolerant [person,] I think the most interesting shared plate that we currently have on our menu is the Duck Zampone. It is the whole cock used and butchered in the traditional style of the Buddhist, where the feet and head are left on but the throat is slit so that it bleeds out. It’s a little more of a humane process and it also allows us to mutilate the duck once it comes. We debone the whole duck, grind the flesh seven times and we emulsify it with a berbere spice; then, we poach it for a couple of hours and roast it. It comes out stuffed inside either the neck, or leg and thigh at the side of the duck. We slice it paper thin so you can see the entire bounty of the animal on your plate. It is a great thing to share because it is paper thin and a fun carnivore entrée to have. If they were not that adventurous, I would say maybe a Roasted Pig Head or Fred Flintstone Beef Short Ribs, which is the whole short rib plate. It is around 18-inches long. All three of those are easy to share for carnivores.

As far as the vegetarians and vegans go, we have a bean farmer who is inclusive to us. Her name is Alta Mae; she does beautiful turkey craves, pintos and beans you would never imagine seeing. She is a florist by trade, but enjoys shelling beans for tradition. In my opinion, we make the top three veggie burgers in America based on those beans and some hard-cooked rice. I just think that even a carnivore would enjoy the veggie burger in the way that we prepare them.

GALO: Speaking of Wall Street, you were New York City bound for several years as a chef before returning home to Cleveland. You were previously the executive chef at Parea in the city. How has New York influenced your cooking and ideas for the Greenhouse Tavern?

JS: New York has been the culinary mecca of the world for the last decade, if not two decades. There is so much innovation and tradition seamed through the fabric of the New York culinary community. It not only was my training ground, but a huge inspiration for the way I approached plates and the way I thought about farmers. Down to the core, what I believed in was reinforced by the way we were able to cook in New York. Coming back to Cleveland, and visiting New York regularly as well as other parts of the country and world helped to research and develop different recipes for our restaurants. It’s a constant source of creativity for us both inspiration wise and design wise. It is a treasure. I do think that all my young cooks should go live in New York and go cook there.

GALO: How has giving back to the environment, which according to your Web site that action “increases the taste, economy and sustainability” of food, changed you as a chef and as a person? What important lessons have you learned, and how does that reflect or speak to who you are?

JS: My quote, to oversimplify sourcing the way that we do, is our jobs are easier as chefs when you start with better ingredients. The best ingredients in my personal opinion come from the soil and terroir that are immediately outside your door. This is an oversimplification of the belief that we are talking about here; the bigger part is that we are a part of a community. As much as I would like to be friends and talk about chefs from the South, chefs from the West and chefs from New York, we are supporting our own farms and our own customers in our own cities, in our own backyards. If you can trace a dollar spent in a nationally, multiple-unit restaurant versus the dollars we spend, I would say 70 percent more of the dollars spent in our restaurant goes to the local economy than in a chain inside of the same city. It is this trickle-down effect of understanding that all of the farmers in Ohio may not be all the farmers that I want to support in terms of their ethics. Yet, if they start to see that their neighbors just down the road are following humane, tolerable beliefs that we agree with and their business is increasing and increasing, then maybe they are going to change the way that they grow their beef.

The same belief system goes with the customers. If the person next to you is eating a Double Decker Rice and Beans Burger and never had a veggie burger that is good, then one time you may be inclined to try that veggie burger and change your taste buds through this trickle-down effect. It is important for people to know where the money is spent and we are really an open book about it. There are restaurants that are better than us for sure — sourcing, sustainability and technique — but we are really open and honest about what we actually do and what we are getting from our backyard.

The Greenhouse Tavern is located at 2038 E 4th Street, Cleveland, OH 44115. Reservations can be made online or via phone by calling 216-443-0511. For more information concerning The Greenhouse Tavern, visit http://thegreenhousetavern.com/.

Featured image: Chef Jonathon Sawyer. Photo Courtesy of: Jonathon Sawyer.

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