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At Oak Park, which opened in the North of Grand neighborhood in Des Moines, Iowa, in October, chef Ian Robertson tosses maitake mushrooms in garlic oil and grills them over oakwood charcoal. He plates them with shallots and black trumpet mushrooms that have been pickled in sherry vinegar and what he calls “earth tone crumble” — a blend of cocoa, cinnamon, star anise, black pepper, and gluten-free flour. They’re all plated around a vinaigrette made by fermenting Fresno chiles and pears for six weeds and then blending them with lemon and oil.
The plate is garnished with watercress and red-veined sorrel.
Price: $15
At Oaxaca Club in Jacksonville Beach, Fla., which is celebrating its one-year anniversary, chef Eddy Escriba dresses raw oysters (the ones pictured are James River oysters) with a compound butter made with chorizo, lemon, parsley, and unsalted butter, roasts them and then finishes them with cotija cheese and smoked rosemary. It’s served with a chimichurri sauce of olive oil, parsley, cilantro, garlic, shallot, and red wine vinegar.
“The chorizo compound butter adds a spicy heartiness to traditional roasted oysters,” he said. “Pops of freshness from the parsley and lemon perfectly balance out the spice and fatness from the butter, chorizo, and cotija. The salty brine from the oysters pairs perfectly with it all.”
Price: $18
At Herd Provisions, a whole-animal butcher shop, restaurant, and boutique grocery in the Wagener Terrace neighborhood of Charleston, S.C., by farmer Alec Bradford, the bar team developed this cocktail to highlight local kumquats.
They roughly chop a pint of the fruit and add it to a liter of Don Q silver rum. They pour it in a vacuum sealed bag and let it infuse in an immersion circulator at 140 degrees Fahrenheit for two hours. Then they strain it through a fine mesh sieve.
They also adjust the acidity of pineapple juice by adding 40 milligrams of citric acid to a liter of the juice and blend it. The resulting liquid is about as tart as lemon juice. The bar team enjoys doing this with many fruits as alternatives to citrus, allowing them to impart a wider variety of flavors to their drinks.
They combine 1.5 ounce of the infused rum with ¾ ounce of Chinola passion fruit liqueur and half an ounce each of Singani63 (Singani is a Bolivian grape spirit) and the adjusted pineapple juice. They shake all of that together with ice, double-strain it into a coupe glass, top it with Domini del Leone Prosecco, and garnish it with rose petals.
Price: $15
At Acadia in Midtown Manhattan, which restaurateur Simon Oren opened in December, chef Ari Bokovza offers this dish of pita stuffed with charred eggplant, hummus, hard-boiled egg, tahini, and amba (a condiment based on pickled green mangoes) that is based on a traditional breakfast of Iraqi Jews.
Bokovza’s version starts with pita made with a house starter that makes it fluffier and gives it more depth of flavor, and a combination of superfine 00 flour and whole wheat flour. The amba is made with fermented mango, lemon, vinegar, and sugar and his own spice blend. This version also has tomatoes roasted in the restaurant’s 700-degree Fahrenheit pizza oven.
The eggplant is sliced into 1-inch rounds, salted and pressed overnight. Then it’s fried in olive oil until deeply caramelized.
It’s finished with house-made hummus and Har Bracha brand tahini (which is also used in the hummus).
Price: $19
At Theodora, which opened last month in the Brooklyn, N.Y., neighborhood of Fort Greene, chef and owner Tomer Blechman, removes all the gills and bloodlines from whole branzino and ages it for four days in a climate- and humidity-controlled chamber. The result is a more intense flavor and silkier texture.
Then he dresses it with olive oil and stuffs it with rosemary, lemon, and thyme and roasts it in his Josper oven at 800 degrees Fahrenheit until the skin is blistering on both sides — around eight minutes.
Then he brushes it with salmoriglio, a condiment of lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, salt, and marjoram, and serves it with lightly dressed greens.
Price: $62
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