Ladies can lunch in new Garden

For more than a quarter of a century there's been an eating establishment on the ground floor of the Lakewood House Apartments residential tower at 4801 North Hills Blvd. in North Little Rock.

For years it was the Victorian Tea Room, which probably tells you a lot about its clientele, which from the beginning has been, and to a certain extent still is, "ladies who lunch," many of them apartment building residents. (It is, of course, supremely convenient to have a decent eating place almost right outside your door.)

In the early '90s, then owner-chef Margie Michell converted the Tea Room to the Victorian Bistro, expanded and contracted and expanded the hours to cover a fuller range of meals, and even briefly operated a second location in a west Little Rock furniture store.

Earlier this year, Michell, looking to retire, sold the business to chef Eric Greer, a Las Vegas import who had begun to make a name for himself by selling gourmet, local-ingredient hummus at the Argenta Farmers Market.

In the intervening five months, Greer has changed the venue's name again, to Garden Bistro, again expanded the hours and, while the building still provides the bulk of his customers, has begun to reach out into the wider Lakewood community.

And why not? It's a nice, locally owned and operated restaurant within a stone's throw of Lakewood Village and the McCain Boulevard-U.S. 67/167 axis, where many (though not all) of the restaurants are chains or franchises.

Five months into his administration, Greer's operation is still a bit of a work in progress, but he has a good handle on it. He starts serving breakfast at 10 a.m. (he found that opening earlier than that was counterproductive) but he offers breakfast items throughout the day. His lunch menu has a good balance among sandwiches, salads and a handful of hot entrees; his dinner menu offers about a dozen relatively simple but diversified entrees.

In the modest-size dining room, Greer has kept most of Michell's upscale decor intact -- a collection of carpet-resistant chairs, mostly antique tables topped with dark cloths, and some tasteful artwork on the walls contrasting with the somewhat large flat-screen TV (tuned to a network talent show on a recent dinner visit, and football-related programming during Sunday brunch). Everybody on the staff, including Greer, pitches in to serve customers.

Greer's hummus is on the menu as a lunch and dinner starter -- $8.95 for a small-bowl trio out of the 10 or so varieties Greer keeps in his fridge. Our trio was a slightly salty "regular" chickpea dip, a version made with beets (and in that characteristic color somewhere between vermilion and Pepto Bismol) that we tasted to be polite but mostly left behind (regular readers will remember our general disdain for beets) and a much nicer balsamic herb in which the predominant flavor was basil. The flavor and the bright green color reminded us a lot of pesto. The dark-crisp house-made pita chips -- or maybe "slivers" would be a more precise word -- apparently had been made to order, because they were still piping hot.

We initially thought the $22.95 dinnertime price tag for the Salmon With Wild Mushroom Ravioli was kind of high until we saw how much food came out of the kitchen. The perfectly textured, slightly blackened piece of salmon was twice the size we expected. It came on top of a generous handful of semi-lunar, firm-shelled ravioli stuffed and topped with mushrooms.

Counting the mushrooms, it appears that Greer wants to make sure diners get their recommended five daily fruits and vegetables in one meal -- ours also included a piled-high mixed-greens salad (not a shred of iceberg to be seen) in a pleasant vinaigrette, sauteed asparagus, half a pear (sliced thinly) and a goodly number of grapes.

Another marvel awaited us for lunch: Tender Asian Chicken ($9.95 for a good-size lunch portion; it's also on the dinner menu), moist and tender boneless chicken in a slightly sweet marinade/sauce with a large pile of jasmine rice (with a bit of the chicken sauce/marinade for accent), a vegetable medley of sauteed Brussels sprouts, sauteed mushrooms and asparagus, a small watermelon wedge and a handful of grapes. Missing, however, were the fried wontons the menu promised. Oh, well, you can't have everything.

Slightly less successful, but still worth ordering, is Greer's misspelled "Rueben" ($9.95), lean corned beef sliced rather thicker than we're used to (there is also a Juicy Cornbeef entree, also $9.95), with just the right-size layer of sauerkraut, provolone instead of Swiss -- but that's OK -- and a tasty remoulade instead of Russian dressing -- but that's OK, too -- all on panini-grilled bread. It came with roasted potatoes, another thin wedge of watermelon and more grapes, plus a pickle spear.

Garden Bistro also has a small-scale but upscale Sunday brunch buffet that, given what you get, is well worth the $18.95. On a recent Sunday, Greer put out fresh fruit, slightly stale poppy-seed bread, a breakfast lineup that included scrambled eggs, sausage links, darn good bacon and biscuits and gravy. What we initially thought were sausage patties turned out to be dark-brown, slightly gooey banana muffins.

Lunchwise, there was roasted chicken, sliced turkey, macaroni and cheese made with a sharp cheddar, sauteed Brussels sprouts (without the mushrooms) and rice with mixed vegetables that earned particular praise from Intrepid Companion. Oh, and all the nicely prepared, fairly user-accessible crab legs we could eat.

Our one slight gripe: Like so many buffets, the food on this one was not particularly hot.

That $18.95 also includes, if you want, eggs Benedict ($10.95 on the all-day breakfast menu) made with ham and a rather spicy hollandaise topped with a lot of paprika; nonalcoholic beverages; and a slightly runny but delicious pecan cobbler a la mode for dessert.

Weekend on 09/25/2014