Green Promise

Green Promise

We see ourselves as stewards of the land we love and, in our small way, protectors of the future.

Our Green Promise isn’t a marketing campaign. It’s a description of the way we do business, which is a direct reflection of the way we live and the values we hold dear.

It starts with our purveyors. We choose to work with farmers, ranchers, and winemakers who tread lightly upon the earth.

It continues to the ingredients we use and how we use them. When we get a duck, we use it all—in numerous dishes. We use every part of the pig but the oink. We can’t even tolerate to see butter burned, since that would fail to honor the people who worked so hard to produce it.

We’re avid composters. Now that we use an anaerobic digester, we’re more than 99-percent landfill-free. Our waste used to fill three dumpsters a week; now it barely tops a five-gallon bucket.

All our wine bottles are recycled; the clear ones find a second life in the restaurant as water pitchers. Our cardboard is recycled. Our daily menus are printed on 100-percent post-consumer waste; they’re then re-used for in-house printing needs before they return to the recycling bin. The ashes from the grill, the grounds from drained espresso cups, and leftover table water all feed our garden.

Our to-go boxes are Bio-Pak. Our disposable serviceware is environmentally friendly; our disposable cutlery is made from a bamboo byproduct and the plates and cups derive from sugarcane. It’s all sustainable and biodegradable.

Our primary equipment-rental company uses a biofuel for its fleet and environmentally-conscious cleaning products for its dishes and laundry.
Our restaurant typically has a half-dozen bikes parked outside, including a “shop bike” we use for getting around downtown and midtown, to the bank, business meetings, and running staff or products to offsite events.

And what about our excess food? We send it directly to homeless services. You may even see Patrick carrying a box of sandwiches out to the railroad tracks for our resident street people; as a way of returning the favor, they keep an eye out for our property.