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Illustration: Greg Clarke<\/p>\nIllustration: Greg Clarke<\/p>\n
The sungolds always come back. I couldn\u2019t 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\u2019t have a whole lot still producing beyond peppers and herbs, but those bite-size yellow tomatoes have reemerged in force, as sweet as they\u2019ve ever been.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s no wonder I\u2019m seeing them all over restaurant menus now. At Eden<\/a>, pastry chef Jos\u00e9phine Le Bozec makes a savory danish with layers of sungold jam, ewe\u2019s milk ricotta, and fresh sungolds. At John\u2019s Food & Wine<\/a>, the kitchen serves them as a salad with other yellow things \u2014 golden beets, yuzu, and candied sunflower seeds. They also scatter them over a charred green bean salad. At the cocktail bar Dearly Beloved<\/a>, they star in a panzanella with burrata and sourdough croutons.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n Here\u2019s where I\u2019d start:<\/p>\n If you haven\u2019t been to Chicago\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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 \u2014 those tomatillo-like sweet yellow fruits). They managed to cancel out each other\u2019s green\/vegetal natures in a way that left both tasting absurdly sweet.\u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019ve 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\u2019s interest from start to finish and where she did not note the exorbitant price. From everything I hear<\/a>, it\u2019s 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\u2019s been most excited about this summer, and his unequivocal answer was stone fruit. He wrote, \u201cWe\u2019re 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\u2019ve 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\u2019ve 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.\u201d Hmmm\u2026.it\u2019s $210 a head. \u201cHoney, wanna celebrate my birthday early?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe season is that awkward middle, but we\u2019re getting close to the fall swing,\u201d wrote the restaurant\u2019s 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 \u2014 as is their wont \u2014 going further afield with their experiments than anyone in town. \u201cThe end of the season has started to have some nice tender sunflower hearts that we\u2019ve been tinkering on and off with.\u201d On this week\u2019s menu you\u2019ll find them braised \u00e0 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n Also, not all the best ingredients have to be local. Chef Paul Fehribach of Big Jones<\/a> points out that mid-September is the peak time for both chanterelles (that\u2019s when I used to find them in my yard in Georgia) and Alaskan halibut. You\u2019re going to have to visit to see what he does with them.<\/p>\n