Launching a new restaurant means ironing out lots of details, from selecting the menu to picking just the right glassware.
The owners of the Grey Plume, which opens for dinner Friday in Midtown Crossing, have taken that kind of attention to detail to a whole new — er, color.
Green.
All those details have added up to make the Grey Plume the greenest restaurant in America, according to the Green Restaurant Association. The Boston-based nonprofit group, which has been certifying restaurants since 1990, assesses environmental practices based on points earned in seven categories, from water efficiency to sustainable food.
“They legitimately are the greenest restaurant in the country,” said Jennifer Fleck, the association's communications manager.
The Grey Plume runs the “green” gamut. The restaurant's menu is driven by the foods available regionally during the season, from locally grown produce to Nebraska bison.
The rustic floors were cut from reclaimed barn wood.
A local glass artist crafted the bread-and-butter plates from wine bottles that Chef Clayton Chapman helped collect from area restaurants.
Appliances and lighting sip, rather than guzzle, energy and water.
Beyond recycling paper, plastic and glass, the staff will send used cooking oils to a biofuels recycler, take compostable materials to their home compost piles or an area farm and shred the recycled-paper menus to help feed the farm's vermiculture — a.k.a. worm composting — operation.
Take-home items, from the to-go boxes and bags to the ribbon-and-raffia wrapped packets used to send home a next-morning pastry, are made from compostable or recycled materials.
Through such efforts, the Grey Plume has amassed the highest number of points among the 300-plus restaurants nationwide participating in the voluntary program. It outscores the next runner-up, a restaurant in Oregon, by more than 25 points.
The points, in turn, translate to stars. The Grey Plume has three and is pushing a fourth.
In addition, the restaurant is the first to earn the association's sustainable building certification, known as Sustainabuild. It's geared specifically toward newly constructed or renovated restaurants and includes construction recycling, battery recycling and Styrofoam-free requirements.
No other certified green restaurants are listed in Nebraska or Iowa, although a number of area restaurants have undertaken various green practices, from composting to serving sustainably raised foods.
Chapman and co-owner Michael Howe, a Chicago-based chef and one of Chapman's former instructors, said they've spent hundreds of hours researching options and tracking down materials.
“I think it's very important to give back what we take,” said Chapman, 24, the former chef at V. Mertz and Spencer's. “I think it's important to close as many loops as possible. The huge underlying philosophy we have is we want to know where our food comes from.”
Restaurants pay a fee to participate in the association's certification program. In turn, the association helps connect the restaurants with resources.
“We were looking to partner with someone who could help us,” Howe said. The restaurateurs, in turn, have shared what they've learned with the association.
The cost of going green was “significantly higher” than conventional options, Howe said. He and Chapman declined to say how much higher. The biggest added expense, they said, was using wood — in the walls, in the dining room chairs — certified as sustainable by the Forest Stewardship Council, another nonprofit organization.
In general, sustainability means continuing to use a material, such as wood, as a resource, but doing so in ways that mean it will still be around in the future.
But Howe said their investments will pay back in the long run, largely in energy savings.
Most kitchen ventilation hoods run constantly at the same speed. But the energy-efficient model they chose responds to the amount of heat being generated.
They selected a dishwasher that runs at a lower temperature, requiring less energy. The sanitizer comes in a dry form, requiring less packaging, and it's certified by Green Seal, yet another nonprofit eco-certification organization.
A restaurant's sustainability makes a big difference to some diners: A restaurant association survey this year indicated that 11 percent of consumers, if choosing among three favorite restaurants, would select the green-certified one every time.
“They want to be able to dine sustainably and, more importantly, they want the confidence that they're (the restaurants) truly doing what they say they're doing,” Fleck said.
The organization doesn't just take a restaurant's word that it's using a certified green cleaning solution or a locally grown leek. They check sources and invoices. “Every single environmental claim they make has to be verified,” she said.
Sourcing the food, Howe said, wasn't a problem, given Chapman's cooking style and the growing slate of local farms with sustainable growing practices.
All the proteins but the fish are local, said Chapman, who graduated from Westside High School. The fish options will be drawn from those listed as good or best choices for sustainability by the Monterrey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch Program. The current menu features farmed Arctic Char, which is on the best choices list.
But it was tricky finding an organic soda suitable for fountain dispensing, Howe said. They finally found one supplier who could provide an agave-based product.
The chefs say their operations will become more efficient over time. They'll add rain barrels. They're trying to figure out how to preserve their own food. And they're considering options for a garden.
Meantime, much of the decor already is sustainable. Repurposed items include a chef's table and serving cart from an Okoboji antique store, a wall shelf pulled from a storage unit owned by their interior designer's mother and silver serving trays picked up at estate sales.
A rustic bench near the front door, a matching hostess stand and the frame for the upstairs herb garden were built by a northwest Iowa woodworker from lumber rescued from an old grainery. Local artists created much of the art and accessories, including the lamp shades that will hang over the bar and the carved oak breadboards.
One piece, by Omaha artist Caleb Coppock, features layers of painted and carved beeswax — locally produced, on reclaimed wood — in a representation of the Platte River. Up close, it smells like baked goods and spring.
“There's a story behind everything,” Howe said.
Contact the writer:
402-444-1223, julie.anderson@owh.com
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