The sungolds always come back. I couldn’t tell you the last time I planted them but they appear in my garden every year, first in the height of the summer and then now, in its waning days. I don’t have a whole lot still producing beyond peppers and herbs, but those bite-size yellow tomatoes have reemerged in force, as sweet as they’ve ever been.
It’s no wonder I’m seeing them all over restaurant menus now. At Eden, pastry chef Joséphine Le Bozec makes a savory danish with layers of sungold jam, ewe’s milk ricotta, and fresh sungolds. At John’s Food & Wine, the kitchen serves them as a salad with other yellow things — golden beets, yuzu, and candied sunflower seeds. They also scatter them over a charred green bean salad. At the cocktail bar Dearly Beloved, they star in a panzanella with burrata and sourdough croutons.
This is without question my favorite season for eating, with the last of the high summer produce piling up (no need to get to the farmers market early for the best tomatoes) and the fall crops coming in. It’s also my favorite season for dining out because those chefs who are most attuned to the delights of the shoulder season are getting creative, inspired, and weird in all the right ways. Now, people, now is the best time to go out for a Wednesday or Thursday dinner in any restaurant with a daily menu, a day when you can avoid the crowds and score the best of limited ingredients.
Here’s where I’d start:
Lula Cafe
If you haven’t been to Chicago’s original farm-to-table restaurant in a while, go now. Few chefs in town are as deft as Jason Hammel with fresh produce; his dishes are guided by the actual flavors of what’s in front of him rather than conventional wisdom about what goes together. Last week he was serving an heirloom tomato and red plum salad, and the two fruits were so matched in texture, temperature, and acidity that your tongue would trip up and then resolve the difference with delight. Grape leaf labneh made for a nice smear on the bottom of the plate for the juices to run into, but a scattering of fennel seedlings really made the ingredients pop. There’s something about the flavor of anise that puts a neon filter on everything around it. Another lovely item from the specials list: a salad of juicy, skinny cucumbers and ground cherries (a.k.a., cape gooseberries — those tomatillo-like sweet yellow fruits). They managed to cancel out each other’s green/vegetal natures in a way that left both tasting absurdly sweet.
Feld
I’ve been wanting to try another meal at the West Town tasting menu restaurant, which I will say is the only lengthy and expensive tasting menu that has managed to keep my wife’s interest from start to finish and where she did not note the exorbitant price. From everything I hear, it’s been better than ever lately, and diners are talking about how well chef Jake Potashnick has managed to distill the flavors of the summer. I asked Potashnick by text what he’s been most excited about this summer, and his unequivocal answer was stone fruit. He wrote, “We’re doing a fun savory play on peaches and cream with grilled peaches resting on a grilled peach puree marinated in peach pepper oil and bathed in a salted poblano cream sauce. We’ve got a peach dessert right now that uses the pits, peaches, and peach leaves. Tomatoes are slowly phasing their way out, maybe another week or two at most. We’ve had them all over the menu. I think a favorite preparation this year has been the sungolds with fresh cheese made with Kilgus milk, dill, dill oil, and a granita made from freezing whole tomatoes and sticking them through a snow cone grinder.” Hmmm….it’s $210 a head. “Honey, wanna celebrate my birthday early?”
Cellar Door Provisions
“The season is that awkward middle, but we’re getting close to the fall swing,” wrote the restaurant’s chef de cuisine Alex Cochran in a text. Cochran and chef-owner Ethan Pikas have been playing around with ground cherries, which they pair with fjord trout, and — as is their wont — going further afield with their experiments than anyone in town. “The end of the season has started to have some nice tender sunflower hearts that we’ve been tinkering on and off with.” On this week’s menu you’ll find them braised à la artichoke barigoule with mackerel, elderflower vinaigrette, and fennel pollen. Aha, fennel. These are all chefs who recognize the brightest flavors of the season and let them guide the recipes.
Also, not all the best ingredients have to be local. Chef Paul Fehribach of Big Jones points out that mid-September is the peak time for both chanterelles (that’s when I used to find them in my yard in Georgia) and Alaskan halibut. You’re going to have to visit to see what he does with them.