Chef Dava Parr wants people who dine at her Wall Street Eats restaurant to not only enjoy taste and texture, but eat a meal that’s easy on the body.
“I wanted to do local farm-to-table foods that are a healthier version of the comfort foods we know and love in America,” Dava, who opened Wall Street Eats on Wall near US 62 on Sept. 15, said. “I’m cooking for psychic, emotional and physical bodies. I’m trying to design each dish to be satisfying to the individual and leave them feeling vitally energized. I want people to leave here feeling better than when they came in.”
When she leaves a restaurant, often she feels pretty sick. She has been putting clean food in her body for 20 years, so she is like a canary in the coal mine when she eats food that has pesticide and herbicide residues and foods cooked with “really horrible fats” like canola and soybean oil.
Dava uses ayurvedic medicine principles for cooking. Ayurveda is a holistic healing system developed about 5,000 years ago in India. She said ayurvedic cooking involves cooking with the elements, as well bringing in all six tastes into each dish: sweet, sour, salty, astringent, spicy and bitter.
“Those six tastes help you digest food,” Dava said. “A lot of our food is just sweet or salty only. In addition to fresh, organic foods with good, natural probiotics, something we are taking into account is working on those different tastes to stimulate the stomach to do its job.”
While vegan dishes are available, you can also get meals with local organic chicken and pork. As part of the focus on fresh seasonal foods, she is offering an Arkansas Black apple crumble for breakfast which is great washed down with fresh squeezed juices and organic coffee drinks with adaptogens.
“The adaptogenic coffees are a new, fun thing now,” Dava said. “We can add ashwagandha, reishi mushroom or raw cacao to coffee, all things that have health benefits. People love the breakfasts and all those sexy coffee drinks. We make our own fresh bagels and muffins, all organic.”
WSE serves breakfast, including burritos and omelets, until noon with lunch starting at 11:30 a.m. They have a panini machine, and offer paninis made with ham, pickles, sharp cheddar and mustard, or roasted chicken, cranberries, walnut chutney and blue cheese.
“There is a lot of food people will recognize, but the difference is its organic and we make it more digestible,” she said. “You can still have cheese, ham and chicken. About 60-70 percent of the menu is locally grown. We get meat and eggs from Conway Farm and Terra Rosa. Our vegetables are grown by Conway Farm, Terra Rosa, Cecille Berry and Patrice Gros.”
They offer homemade sauces, almond butter, humus, and sun-dried tomato basil goat cheese. Her rice bowls with veggies and meat are particularly popular. Bowls are fresh cooked and can be vegan or include meat or eggs. An example is pork posole with curried sweet potato and garlicky greens.
Lunch proteins can be vegetarian teriyaki tempeh, roasted chicken or wild-caught ahi tuna. At lunchtime, one or two soups are available, along with salads.
For Dava, Wall Street Eats is a culmination of a lifetime spent loving food, health and organic gardening. She lived here when she was nine to ten years old, and then her sister, Julie Bradshaw, stayed here when the family moved back to California. Dava came back to live with her sister and finish high school from ages 16-18.
“Through the years, I lived a lot of places but would come back here to see my sister,” Dava said. “Once Julie died, I wanted to see more of my Arkansas family. Julie’s daughter, Jessi Collins, has four children. I call myself a grantie because I’m the great aunt.”
Dava started cooking in restaurant when she was 16. That now amounts to 40 years of cooking. In addition to owning her own restaurants, she also has worked as a private chef. Previous to moving back Eureka Springs three years ago, she was in Aspen and Paonia, Colo. For ten years, she operated the Fresh and Wyld Farmhouse Inn which included an organic farm with a Community Supported Agriculture business, along with a restaurant and lodging with seven bedrooms.
The foodie entrepreneur is encouraging others to be involved in Wall Street Eats, a large building with dining and a community room upstairs and a kitchen downstairs,
“I want it to be multi business,” she said. “I am looking for talented chefs who want to do popup dinners at night. I want to give local entrepreneurs chance. We will cater private dinners, business receptions, parties and wedding receptions. We can use this space for a lot of things. It could be someone wanting to come in and do fermented foods or baking. I don’t want to be responsible for all the rent. I want to keep my lifestyle happening and not just be a worker bee. I am really inspired by other people doing their thing around me and not always being the boss.”
Right now, yoga is being offered in the 750-sq.-ft. community room. Katie Zerr is teaching on Saturday mornings at 9 a.m. and Sandra Walker is teaching on Wednesday nights at 5:30 p.m. She is looking for more people to teach yoga, dancing, pilates or tai chi. For low impact and non-profit events, the fee is only $15 per hour. Prices are higher, but still reasonable, for commercial events.
“I would love to see house concerts and other events,” she said. “I would like to see it get lively.”
The restaurant is open from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. every day but Tuesday.