As far as restaurant names go, the Greenhouse Enoteca in Allentown really does work on a number of levels. There are indeed green things growing in the Greenhouse—herbs and lettuces. A green ethos drives the place, as sustainability is a paramount concern, from the smallest to the biggest details; takeout containers and pasture practices are part of the same continuum of concerns, really.
But you didn’t come here to read about takeout containers, right?
The name also pays homage to its former iteration as Roth’s Flowers, which closed in 2015 after 80 years in business. The greenhouse is/was the greenhouse. Of course, a full kitchen was added onto the building, but the basic bones of the building, including the sloped glass, remain intact. It’s run by two best friends who’ve known each other since high school: Salvatrice Pitruzzella, who came to the United States from honest-to-God Sicily, Italy, and Heidi
Borelli, an area native. And these days, they even live within blocks of each other in Allentown’s West End, which, in turn, is just blocks from the Greenhouse. (Borelli grew up shopping at Roth’s with her mother.)
And yes, this place is Italian, but it’s Italian-Italian, not Italian-American in the way of breaded everything and red-and-white checkered tablecloths and indiscriminate, abundant incorporation of garlic. Its closest counterpart is Molinari’s in Bethlehem; they share the genial hospitality, farm-to-table approach and rustic, regional Italian fare. Yes, this means real wood-fired pizza whose dough is made from tipo 00, a fine Italian flour often used in pizzas; those crunchy bits on the crust bottom are semolina. It also means burrata, that super-creamy mozzarella-like cheese made from buffalo milk. And it means homemade pastas and fresh ones that come from New York and the best tomatoes that you can find. Arancini, craft cocktails, house-made wine (they’re named Enoteca for a reason), and simple but delicious fare are what you’ll encounter.
Vongole from Greenhouse Enoteca
Vongole
Clams, house white wine,crushed red pepper, lemon
But Heidi and Sal—let’s dispense with journalistic formality, because these two are so warm I can’t really talk about them with just their last names—are about as yin and yang of a pair as you can possibly imagine.
Heidi is a gregarious bright light; Sal waits for the right moment and gets in the best word edgewise. It’s easy to see how after all these years they don’t need to actually communicate verbally across a dining room floor. Heidi knows by the way Sal’s jaw is set what’s happening as she’s waiting to expedite food to the table. Long-term relationships often bring familiarity, trust and ease. “We share a brain,” Heidi says, laughing.
Sal studied at the New England Culinary Institute in Vermont, but she and her brother Antonio, an investor, happen to also have an incredibly keen eye for real estate—they flip houses, in common parlance. So they happen to know a good building when they see one. And Heidi has always been tinkering with recipes.
Describing how the Greenhouse runs isn’t so straightforward. Heidi calls the staff her “tribe,” which kind of goes beyond the idea of restaurants being families, blood lines or not. There’s an executive chef, and one of their chefs does double duty overseeing the planting process; he just happens to know about it. But there’s also Heidi and Sal, who brainstorm the recipes and oversee the purveyor selection process, and steer the ship, so to speak. Sal expedites—or runs the food out—and Heidi is generally the manager. One of their chefs, Michael, is also really great with growing plants and herbs. He also happens to split his time with the wood-fired pizza oven. Heidi and Sal are both in and out of the kitchen, literally and metaphorically.
Salvatrice Pitruzzella and Heidi Borelli of Greenhouse Enoteca
Salvatrice Pitruzzella and Heidi Borelli
Heidi says she always knew she wanted to run a restaurant. And so here she is, running this one, and it’s kind of blown them both away. The neighborhood has responded in ways they’d hoped—an embrace—but diners are also finding them from as far as New York, Philadelphia and Maryland. (Destination dining is a thing, people!) “We never anticipated it would take off the way it has,” says Sal. “We were so humbled by the reception we got.”
“My heart just exploded. We were very shocked,” says Heidi.
Yes, people are digging the farm-to-table fare and we’re at a point now where it doesn’t require the extreme level of server intervention as it may have five or 10 years ago. Much of the fare is organic; if it’s not organic it’s non-GMO, and you won’t find overly processed ingredients at the tables. Where possible, Sal and Heidi have visited the farms from which they source.
But it’s not an easy type of place to run. The Greenhouse sources from Breakaway Farms in Mount Joy, which bills itself as “beyond organic” (organic standards don’t address the humane treatment of animals necessarily), and gets some amazing cheeses from Flint Hill Farm, for example. Produce is sourced from local farms on a rotating basis based on availability (Sal also says she wants to spread the love around as it pertains to sourcing). And like many restaurants, they buy through the wholesaler, Lancaster Farm Fresh Co-Op, which pulls from a roughly 100-mile radius.
Selections will change as the seasons do, but the pizza is a mainstay, there will always be pasta, and vegetarian and vegan selections are also present. Menu mainstays include the shrimp limoncello, arancini, the house-made potato chips (do not miss them!), among others—the accompaniments may change, but the dish itself remains.
Maybe you’ve tried to get in to the Greenhouse but to no avail. We have to address the proverbial elephant in the room: the waiting list. This is one of those places that doesn’t take reservations. “We want you to just come and hang out. It’s meant to be a casual space. And you can totally hang at the bar while you’re waiting for your table,” Heidi says. (Or maybe you’ll get lucky and there will be some space at the enormous open “camaraderie table.”) In order to do Greenhouse right, you join others in the parking lot on the weekends, ahead of opening time, to get in line for your seat (it fills up after about 100 people are seated; seasonal outdoor seating adds a tad more). It kind of sounds like you’re waiting in line for concert tickets to go on sale, or something to that effect, I know. Bear with me though. We aren’t going to get into particulars about the wait on the weekends versus the week, but we can tell you that people are sipping on the likes of a chai-infused sangria that is ice-cold and somehow works for summer (yes, it’s counter-intuitive, but trust me), or they’re having some of the house-smoked wine or a smoked Old Fashioned or Manhattan.
And keep in mind that Italy is the country we can thank for the beautiful term and culinary movement called “slow food.” That doesn’t mean, however, that once you order it takes forever to receive your prize—Heidi says the goal is to get the food out in well under 30 minutes, consistently.
“My husband said, some best friends get those necklaces they wear around their necks for their friendship, but we got each other a restaurant,” says Heidi, laughing.
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Greenhouse Enoteca
Hours
Tues.–Thurs.: 5–10 p.m.; Fri. & Sat.: 5–11 p.m.
Payment
Visa, Mastercard, American Express
Parking
Lot adjacent to the restaurant, street parking
Reservations
The Greenhouse is primarily a walk-in-only restaurant; reservations are accepted for parties of eight or more.
What to Order
Well, the menu rotates seasonally. Currently, I can tell you the Caprese salad is amazing. But I can tell you that you’ll want to order pizza. The dough is made with imported tipo 00 flour—it’s finer than all-purpose and the crust has a dusting of semolina, which gives it a little bit of a crunch. You’ll want to eat whatever salad is happening at the moment, and the pasta dishes, such as the fettuccine and clams, are worth sampling. I tried an incredible chicken sandwich with flavors redolent of summer—pesto, tomato, on a garlicky toasted bun.
Specials
The restaurant runs features on a regular basis and has aspirations to make those specials come from the surplus of whatever farmers are bringing them—a chalkboard with a choose-your-own culinary adventure approach, with a list of those ingredients and you can pick them. And then the kitchen puts them together in ways they see fit, with whatever you do or don’t want. Amazing, right? They also run something called Unwind Hour on the weekends, from roughly 8 to 11 p.m., and the intentional opposite of the traditional happy hour; house wine is $5, and you can come and hang at the bar and have some pizza. “We wanted to give people a way to end their evening with us,” says Heidi.
2114 W. Tilghman St., Allentown | 610.707.1152 | ghenoteca.com
