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Friday, December 23, 2011

Pie Pieday: Grasshopper at Club 178

Posted by Kat Robinson on Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 10:17 AM

Kat Robinson
IT'S GREEN: Club 178's Grasshopper Pie.

Great restaurants make stuff from scratch. Club 178 in Bull Shoals makes its sauces, its dressings, its pastries, its rubs and a whole host of other things from scratch, including an ever-changing array of desserts.

One of those desserts was this grasshopper pie… a pie I had often encountered in my youth but missed during the whole breadth and span of my pie research for the big story at Thanksgiving. That seems inconceivable, but it is true.

The mint-and-chocolate pie was very popular in the family circles I traveled in as a child. But I have seen that combination very little in restaurants as an adult. Oh, sure — you can get mint chocolate chip ice cream at the store — there’s even a gum that’s mint chocolate chip, which I find a little strange. I’ve had mint leaves atop different chocolate confections by our local top shelf chefs, but this one simple pie has not been on any menu I’ve nodded my way through in quite a while. The closest I’ve seen has been the mint chocolate chip ice cream pie at Hunka Pie, and while it’s on the menu I can’t recall actually seeing it offered on any visit I’ve been there.

So hearing Grasshopper Pie mentioned by our waitress in her schpiel was ear catching. Mind you, I was quite full from dinner already. I hadn’t actually eaten pie since I had wrapped up my primary pie research the first week of November, but I wanted this. And I got it.

Kat Robinson

It was green. Yay! Grasshopper pie SHOULD be green. Additionally, it was not a Jell-O pie or an ice cream pie. This was a marshmallow based pie. I could taste the crème de menthe (where the green came from) clearly but not too strongly, just enough to balance out against the Oreo cookie crust. There was also a light chocolately taste, probably from crème de cacao. It was served up with a drizzle of good old-fashioned Hershey syrup (like the stuff from the can, remember that?), slightly chilled with some whipped cream to boot.

It was, in many ways, just minty enough to negate the need for an after-dinner mint.

Club 178 is a rather neat place. We’ll talk about it soon. Just know that reservations are suggested, though not required, and it’s no jacket required. You’ll find it on Highway 178 in Bull Shoals. Look for the bowling pin. (870) 445-4949 or check out the website.

Tags: pie, Bull Shoals, Club 178

        
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