A finer Pointe

I'm not noble enough to patronize a place just because it's green. Happily, Green Zone Pizza, open since last month in Grosse Pointe, is both planet-friendly and palate-friendly.

Prius-driving owner Markus Wierderkehr has a background in recycling, and his countertop, where patrons place their orders, is made from recycled glass bottles and his floors from recycled tiles. More important over the green long run, he's seeking LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification, aiming to be "the greenest restaurant in Michigan."

Wierderkehr shuns an oven that burns wood or coal — "probably the worst thing you can do" — and instead employs a "pizza oven on steroids" whose nature he won't reveal. It produces a pie in 3.5 minutes without using much energy, he claims.

Wierderkehr figures he can afford to pay more for organic ingredients by saving on energy, lighting up the whole restaurant with just 500 watts' worth of LED lights. He uses organic mozzarella, organic shrimp from an Okemos farmer, organic flour from Avalon and organic cherry juice in his barbecue sauce.

The results are tasty, improving over the course of my two visits on the restaurant's 11th day and on its 30th. 

Nine white-flour or whole-wheat pizza options (plus infinite build-your-owns) include some familiar titles: pepperoni, vegetarian, Greek, California, Hawaiian. But there's also a shrimp and a "cherry BBQ chicken" — that's the one with the cherry juice, and the most-ordered pizza thus far. A turkey sausage number is frankly named: "I Can't Believe It's Not Sausage."

This is not the place for those who value crust above all — there's not much edge on Wierderkehr's pizzas. I loved the California, with its sun-dried tomatoes, roasted garlic and spinach, and warmed up to the Greek, which tasted more of olives than anything else. The vegetarian was less memorable, despite a long list of toppings, and the tomato sauce on the mildly spicy sausage pizza tasted too much like canned.

A pound of cherry barbecued wings was excellent despite my misgivings — peppery, not too sweet. A spinach salad was better on my second visit, the leaves well-coated but not dripping, with plenty of bacon, roasted red peppers and a subtle roasted tomato vinaigrette. Other salads are Caesar, romaine with cherries, and arugula with roasted beets.

Three sandwiches are served on Avalon's organic hoagie rolls. A roasted shrimp po' boy with jalapeño and pineapple was delicious if smallish; even better was a set of three sliders featuring bacon, avocado and lime mayo. Other nonpizza items are honey-smoked salmon dip, veggie and turkey sandwiches, and some cookies that did not do Avalon proud.

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