HG Sply just might bowl you over

A restaurant that calls itself “paleo-inspired” may not at first seem a great bet for vegetarian eating. Paleo types try to avoid anything that comes from modern agriculture — legumes, wheat, dairy, most of the things I like about my diet.

And the gatherer side of things has always seemed scarier and more meager than the hunter fare. Who would want to make do with just nuts, seeds and berries?

It’s a bit of a surprise, then, that the new HG Sply Co. has such a well-balanced menu that caters almost equally to carnivore and vegetarian.

Fortunately, chef Danyele McPherson and chef de cuisine Eric O’Connor are not being too literal about the paleo thing. McPherson has brought excellent vegetarian dishes to the Fort Worth Food + Wine Festival the past two years, and clearly values pleasure over nutritional correctness and virtue — although her food seems pretty healthful, too.

“Everything on the menu is pretty much vegetarian, unless you feel like adding a protein,” our server said on our first visit. He was exaggerating a bit, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

First, we have to pay tribute to what appears to be HG’s most popular appetizer, the chips and queso ($12). Which, as it happens, is vegan.

Now, even though I’m a longtime vegetarian, I have never been attracted to things like nondairy queso or vegetarian bacon. I avoid these even at a place like Spiral Diner, which probably knows what it’s doing with faux meats and cheeses.

But HG had lost our names on the wait list, so a manager brought over some free queso when we were finally seated.

It’s a big, spicy bowl of a remarkably cheeselike mixture of blended cashews, white potatoes and something else, topped by guacamole, salsa and cilantro. (I’d had a strong cocktail on an empty stomach and can’t remember what our guy said the third main ingredient is. Just order it.)

There was a load of housemade chips, too, so we almost didn’t want anything else, but the menu is so vegetarian-friendly that we had to plow ahead.

The main attraction is a section devoted to “bowls,” with your choice of six prepared bases or a build-your-own option. You choose a protein from the “hunted” list and a vegetarian base (the “gathered”) and eat like a Paleolithic person. Who, let’s be honest, probably ate somewhat less quinoa.

Every one of the bases is vegan, and they’re fairly complex. There’s a zucchini “pasta,” with strips of the vegetable sauteed with tomatoes, eggplant, chard, caramelized onion, pickled sweet peppers, olives and toasted hemp-oat crumb. There’s a yellow coconut curry with several vegetables, red chiles and a cucumber-cilantro-mint relish; a Tex-Mex mixture; a stir-fry with seven vegetables, sesame seasoning and toasted hemp seeds; and the True Grit, with poblano-cauliflower-cashew “grits,” sauteed rainbow chard, mushrooms, caramelized onion and herb salad.

You can add vegan quinoa “meatballs” or an animal protein (for a total of $13 for a quinoa-topped bowl, $14-$19 for various premium meats), or make a custom bowl from a short list of individual ingredients and dressings.

We also liked our build-your-own creation with sweet potato hash, honey-garlic Brussels sprouts, those faux poblano grits and an aioli drizzle.

Another day, we sampled vegetarian dishes from the salad and sandwich parts of the menu. A carnivore loved the greens and grains salad ($12), with organic power greens, wild rice, black and white quinoa, blueberries, dried cranberries, avocado, toasted almonds and hemp seeds in a citrus-sherry vinaigrette. Though there are lots of enticing meat dishes on the menu, he said he’d actually order this again.

The quinoa burger ($13) is housemade and managed to have a crispy patty with a decent texture, though it became a knife-and-fork project toward the end (most of the good housemade ones do). The gooey toppings — which include ginger-garlic hummus, avocado smash and olive tapenade — add a lot of moisture and probably helped cause the bun breach. The default side is french fries but you can substitute a simple kale salad that has a sweet vinaigrette dressing and is actually pretty good.

I liked the burger fine, but the other options here are so much more novel and exciting that I may forget to order it again. Next time, maybe the mushroom-toasted cashew-quinoa pilaf or the jalapeño-hominy “mac & cheese”?

HG Sply Co. is in the WestBend development, 1621 River Run Drive, Suite 176, Fort Worth; 682-730-6070; www.hgsplyco.com.

This story was originally published August 31, 2016 at 12:52 PM with the headline "HG Sply just might bowl you over."