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Whether it is in cocktails, entrees and even desserts, vegetables are becoming the star of the plate. At Second Home Kitchen + Bar, Chef Jason Brumm started a fun new way to celebrate Meatless Monday by featuring a new vegetable each week. The restaurant often has guests guess which vegetable they are using on social media to help #MeatlessMondays continue trending. A while back they let followers help choose the veggie by voting for their favorite! Here’s an example featuring carrots: Carrot Ginger Soup, Carrot and Green Curry Hummus & Carrot Arancini.
Bluestem Brasserie, an urban neighborhood restaurant in the cultural heart of downtown San Francisco, features a modern brasserie menu that focuses on innovative seasonality and whole animal use. Executive Chef Francis Hogan creates a seasonally changing vegetable entrée celebrating the finest Northern Californian produce—for summer, Hogan’s Stuffed Peppers played on traditional chiles rellenos featuring an Anaheim pepper stuffed with Cowboy Caviar (black beans, corn, cherry tomatoes) and one gypsy pepper stuffed with eggplant picadillo, green olives, red chili sauce and house-made farmer’s cheese.
Mark Allen, executive chef at Towne Stove and Spirits in Boston, says the wow factor is a key part of the growing large plates trend. After one of his Whole Wood-Fire Grilled Red Snappers is brought out from the kitchen, the orders really start coming. At Poggio Trattoria in Sausalito, CA, the Bollito Misto is carved tableside, courtesy of this custom outfitted cart.
Executive chef Ben Pollinger has been serving large format dinners since he started at Oceana in 2006. He recently introduced “Tableside for Two” to his guests at the Michelin-starred seafood restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, with menu highlights including Shrimp & Oyster Paella and this Whole Fried Pink Snapper with curried yogurt sauce, cucumber, cilantro. Upon request, he can also provide guests with a big bass large format dinner that serves six to 12.
Using fresh and local produce is all the rage, but what do you do when it’s not available? Open a can or jar of the veggies you pickled during the season. Paul Virant’s book, with Kate Leahey, The Preservation Kitchen: The Craft of Making and Cooking with Pickles, Preserves, and Aigre-doux, reveals a world of endless flavor combinations using revolutionary ideas that bring homemade preserves to life. Pairing science with art, Virant presents expert preserving techniques, sophisticated recipes and seasonal menus. He uses many of the preserves in dishes at his two restaurants in Chicago: Perennial Virant and Vie. This image of pickles, white escabeche and egg comes from the cookbook and was taken by Jeff Kauck.
At Sage Restaurant Group’s Urban Farmer Portland, you might see chef Matt Christianson taking some of the décor back to the kitchen. This dining room, dubbed the pantry, is lined with some of his kitchen’s pickling work, which allows for locally sourced ingredients to be used year round.
Dessert was one of the first things customers cut back as a result of the recession. That, finally, seems to be a thing of the past, and restaurants are responding by enhancing their offerings. At Oceanique in Evanston, IL, chef/owner Mark Grosz offers this beautiful Day & Night Cake with layers of chocolate mousse, whipped cream Chantilly, chocolate cake with chocolate ice cream. Photo by Kurman Photography.
You get bonus points for combining two of our top trends into one dish, which is what Spot Dessert Bar from Chase Restaurant Group has done with its Sweet Potato Cake. The dish is veggie forward with the fluffy sweet potato cake, but plenty sweet with spiced brown sugar cream, sautéed apple and crème fraiche.
More and more chefs are creating their own spices, sauces and tableside condiments, allowing for additional personalization and innovation. Storefront Company’s chef Bryan Moscatello makes a house steak sauce made with jalapeno, shallots, garlic, Worcestershire sauce, beef stock, coriander and cilantro. All the ingredients are cooked down to achieve an intense flavor and he brings that back with butter and uses it on a beef dish served at the Chicago restaurant.
In Los Angeles, Plan Check Kitchen & Bar celebrates the classic burger with inventive and unique flavor combinations. Chef Ernesto Uchimura (formerly the opening executive chef for Umami Burger, ventures beyond the beef with house-made sauces, salts and spice with Asian influences. His sriracha leather and ketchup leather are like a fancy farmers market driven fruit roll up that he puts on hamburgers. By dehydrating the homemade ketchup, he takes the water out, which leaves only pure ketchup flavor that is then reconstituted by the burger juices which results in a beefy tasting ketchup.
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