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With a name inspired by nearby eagle sightings and owl calls, the Eagle & The Owl Public House at Liberty Mountain Resort features a menu that’s just as adventuresome. Between the sweeping mountain views of the 400-acre Adams County property and the innovative menu, you just may be swept off your feet.
Sous chef Joshua Spataro describes Eagle & The Owl as “a gastropub with rustic American health food.”
The driving force behind Eagle & The Owl’s creative menu is Chef Charles Rousey and his team. His kitchen hums with teamwork because nearly every menu item is created and built with house-made ingredients. Many items are developed by processes that require days or even weeks to develop their flavors.
“I’ve been in the business 30-some years and I’m still energized and excited about learning. Fifty years ago [scratch cooking] is how everybody cooked; it’s not a new concept but our society has gotten away from the basics,” he says.
For example, the star of Spataro’s favorite menu item, the pastrami wrap—pastrami—is made in-house via a marinade that develops the meat’s flavors over several days. It is combined with Swiss cheese, broccoli salad, BBQ-Dijon mustard, house-cut fries, jalapeños and house-made pickles; the enveloping grilled flatbread is also made in-house.
In fact, Eagle & The Owl’s breads are all baked in-house, including the tortillas for bison tacos, featuring bison skirt steak, avocado, cilantro, black bean salsa, cheddar cheese, pickled jalapeños, and citrus crème fraiche—also made, you guessed it, in-house. It’s paired with Maryland street corn, which Rousey describes as his take on Arizona-style street corn, with the Maryland twist of Old Bay seasoning plus herbs and cheese, all braised in the broiler to melt the cheese into the nubby corn kernels.
One of the winter entrees, southern barbecue chicken with Poblano ale mac ‘n cheese and spicy tasso ham collards, has special meaning to Rousey, a North Carolina native.
“Wherever you grew up is always going to be part of you and influence your cooking. Being from the south, I grew up on collard greens, so I had to put them on the menu,” he says. “There are two styles of North Carolina BBQ—an eastern one with vinegar that has a nice spice to it and a western one, which we lean towards on our menu. It’s tomato-based and sweet.”
Rousey says the Eagle & The Owl attracts a wide range of customers—those coming specifically for the restaurant, resort guests and winter sports enthusiasts who work up an appetite “on the mountain.”
With 20 beers on tap, the menu suggests a beer pairing for every menu item. And the bar is offering a revamped cocktail menu incorporating house-made bitters, which Rousey says is a five-week-long process combining apple peels, cinnamon, cloves, coriander, lemon, star anise, and later maple syrup. Rousey says the bitters shine in the specialty cocktail, Son of a Mountain Man, served with a slice of famous local Adams County apple.
Take a Snow Day
While Liberty Mountain Resort offers 18-hole golf, wedding, and conference venues, a resort hotel, and a spa, it’s perhaps best known as a winter sports destination. Skiing, snow tubing, snowboarding, and ice skating are all on the menu for fun.
The resort, just west of Gettysburg, offers skiers 16 trail options with a total of 100 skiable acres—35 percent beginner terrain, 40 percent intermediate and 25 percent expert, according to Christina Petrilli, Liberty Mountain marketing director. She says the longest run is the Dipsy Doodle at 5,200 feet—almost a mile.
Petrilli says the resort is offering a learn-to-ski or snowboard package on Thursdays in January that includes a beginner area lift ticket, rental equipment and a first-time lesson for $55.
She says the resort is a great staycation option for fun-seeking families and couples: “It’s the quintessential four-season resort.”
Eagle & The Owl Public House at Liberty Mountain Resort
78 Country Club Trail, Carroll Valley, PA
