The story couldn’t be cooler: an award-winning, highly successful, fully eco-friendly restaurant serving only locally grown, seasonal produce—right in the heart of America’s industrial agriculture belt. Organic Connections, the magazine for Natural Vitality, sat down with co-owner and chef Clayton Chapman to learn about this amazing venture.
Omaha, Nebraska, may not be the first place you think of when you hear the attribute “Greenest Restaurant in America.” But The Grey Plume—opened in 2010 near midtown Omaha—is leading the sustainable food movement in the area. Clayton Chapman, 26-year-old co-owner and executive chef, prioritizes sourcing ingredients from local and organic growers to create delicious dishes such as market fresh fish with fiddlehead ferns, gnocchi and shitake mushrooms; sweet potato agnolotti with ramps and ricotta salata; and butternut squash soup with truffles, kumquat, and huckleberry.
The Grey Plume’s green initiatives extend beyond the food as well. “We partnered with the Green Restaurant Association. They have a few different types of certification; their ‘sustainable certification’ applies to new builds and renovations,” Chapman explains in an interview with Organic Connections. “We installed low-flow water aerators on our hand tanks to reduce our water consumption, and low-flow toilets to reduce our consumption in that capacity. We have a full recycling program, and a full composting program with our local farm.”
Read more in Organic Connections.
