Steve's Greenhouse Grill
Farm-to-Flame · Est. 2009
Wauwatosa · Wisconsin
A fourteen-day rotation, written this morning by what came out of the ground. Greens, herbs, and edible flowers cut between five and seven; plates leaving the kitchen by noon.
Most restaurants write a menu, then go shopping. We do it the other way around. Every other Tuesday morning, our six full-time greenhouse farmers walk the four acres with Executive Chef Marrone and the line cooks, and we choose the forty-odd ingredients that will define the next two weeks.
This week: heirloom carrots the size of a finger, pulled Tuesday after the first hard frost sweetened them overnight. Red Russian kale with stems you can eat raw. The last of the Genovese basil, basil being a thing that ends abruptly around the first of October. Two varieties of winter squash, both grown from seed started in our own greenhouse in March. And a single pound-and-a-half of woodland mushrooms foraged under contract by a farmer fourteen miles north of here.
What follows is the menu those ingredients asked for. It will change on a Tuesday, two weeks from now, with the same weather and different produce. That is the point.
— Steve Marrone, Executive Chef & Founder
Every dish on this menu passes through the same four stations. Order matters. The order is what the menu is, really.
Cutting happens between 5:00 and 7:00 a.m., when cell walls are turgid with overnight moisture and the aromatics are at their peak. Greens go into chilled hampers; herbs stay upright in water the way florists treat them.
240+ varieties · 4 acres · 58 in the team
Produce reaches the kitchen by 7:30 a.m. — still field-warm. Greens go through a three-bath cold wash; roots are dry-brushed; microgreens are given a final fluffing by hand. Nothing is dressed until the order hits the pass.
14 line cooks · 0 pre-mixed salads
The open-fire hearth grill runs on sustainable oak and fruitwood sourced within 50 miles of the restaurant. Steaks finish their dry-age here — a minimum of 28 days in the Himalayan salt chamber, then a hard sear over the coals.
Oak & fruitwood · 28-day dry-age · 100% open fire
Under four hours from root to plate. The garnish is whatever you cut at five a.m.; the sauce was finished that afternoon; the protein went on the fire minutes ago. 68% of every ingredient on the plate was grown on-site.
< 4 hours · 68% on-site · 41,000 lbs composted since 2009Four featured plates. Each carries the greenhouse plot number it came from and the hour it was cut.
A 14-oz ribeye, dry-aged 32 days in our Himalayan salt chamber, glazed with roasted heirloom carrot purée, finished with brown butter, charred-lion's mane, and a single burnt sage leaf from Plot 12.
Sustainably caught Black cod, set directly onto oak embers for ninety seconds a side, then rested on a bed of braised Red Russian kale and lemon verbena. Finished with saba and a single shiso leaf.
A 1.6-lb half chicken from a 6th-generation Wisconsin farm, brined 24 hours, hung over the hearth for 22 minutes. Served with charred lemon, fire-roasted Romanesco, and a pan jus of green peppercorn and thyme.
A whole Delicata squash, halved and roasted directly on the embers until the sugars caramelize, stuffed with wild rice, charred radicchio, hazelnut, and a burnt-honey drizzle. Finished with sheep's-milk feta from a farm twelve miles east.
The full menu — firsts, sides, and dessert — is at the table when you sit down. What is on the next page is what came out of the ground last night.
"We get asked, often, what a vegetarian eats at a place called Greenhouse Grill. The honest answer is: the best produce on the menu. We have never needed a separate kitchen to take plants seriously — it is the entire reason the greenhouse exists."
The kitchen runs a real plant-forward program: the same fire, the same farms, the same plating discipline. The Fire-Roasted Delicata (above) is one of six current vegetarian or vegan mains on this week's menu, and the chef's-counter chefs have a fully plant-based tasting option that runs six courses across the season's harvest.
Read the full vegetarian menuA beverage program built for a menu that changes every fourteen days. The wine list is curated; the whiskey shelf is short and deliberate.
Curated by Sommelier Mara Vasquez (Court of Master Sommeliers, Certified). The list leans low-intervention, Old World, and chosen to flatter the harvest's herbs and smoke — not to impress the buyer.
Pinot Noir, Eola-Amity Hills, Crowley Station — 2022. Light fruit, structural acid, none of the jam that drowns a 32-day-aged steak.
Riesling, Mosel, Selbach-Oster — 2021. Slate, green apple, just enough residual to lift the cod's sweetness.
Gamay, Beaujolais-Villages, Foillard — 2022. Bright, peppery, kind to caramelized squash and burnt honey.
The full list — 184 selections, 72% from producers within 100 miles — is available as a downloadable PDF and at every table. Ask your server for the sommelier walk-through; it is included with any pairing flight.
A short shelf, picked by Beverage Director Ellis Cho. Designed for the hearth's smoke and a quiet sit after dinner. No top-shelf jargon — just bottles worth ordering a second of.
A house pour of house-infused applewood-smoked rye with a teaspoon of our own beehive honey. The pour most regulars don't see on the list.
The pour at the chef's counter when the hearth is going strong. Sits against the smoke without fighting it.
For dessert. The sherry cask pulls against the burnt-honey drizzle on the Fire-Roasted Delicata without competing.
A downloadable PDF listing every pour and the entire wine list is available at the host stand. Our two beekeepers keep 14 hives on the southern edge of the greenhouse — the honey in Smoke & Honey was pulled last Sunday.
The next harvest is at five in the morning. The next menu is Tuesday at noon. The next table is the one you'd like to call.
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