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The live, street-level research I conduct each year with my culinary team in more than 100 newly opened restaurants in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago consistently yields practical, new ideas for keeping menus fresh and up to date. For the past several years, the menus of these restaurants have shown both a marked increase in the number of dishes where vegetables or fruit constitute the center of the plate, and a shift away from the menu category of “sides,” where vegetables have typically been relegated, in favor of a dedicated offering of highly creative dishes under the heading of “vegetables.”
Starting with kale and then progressing to Brussels sprouts and cauliflower, each year a few more vegetables (and fruits) emerge as menu stars, simultaneously capturing the imaginations of chefs across the country. Two in particular stood out in this year’s research.
Menu Star: Sweet Potatoes
Roasted whole and topped with a wide vari- ety of sweet and savory accompaniments, sweet potatoes have gained significant traction on menus. Chefs are choosing extra-large sweet potatoes for these dishes, both enhancing the value equation and making them ideal for sharing.
New York’s Motel Morris offers a Roasted
Sweet Potato as a sharing plate, topping the split potato with labneh (strained yogurt) that has been whipped with maple syrup, and fin- ished with a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkle of fleur de sel. On the breakfast menu at Portsmith in Chicago, chef Nate Henssler serves his signature Loaded Sweet Potato Benedict, which layers black beans and a creamy avocado salsa verde atop poached eggs, attractively garnished with fine herbs and thin shavings of red jalapeño peppers and breakfast radishes.
The Salt Baked Sweet Potato at Mexican restaurant Tallula’s in Los Angeles is a multi-layered dish of pork carnitas, black beans and hominy, slathered with a charred chili salsa and finished with a generous topping of melted Monterey Jack.
At The Exchange in Downtown Los Angeles, the Grilled Sweet Potato is first oven roasted and then split and grilled over a wood fire, and topped with an olive oil-based condiment of roasted and chopped almonds and ground chili morita. And at their highly ac- claimed restaurant Kismet, chefs Sarah Hymanson and Sara Kramer serve a Sweet Potato that features a clever mash-up of Middle-Eastern and Southern California ingredients, topping the roasted and peeled potato with puffed wild rice, mustard frills and a coconut vinaigrette.
As a center-of-the-plate ingredient, sweet potatoes have much to recommend them. They are economical, simple to prepare, and hold
BY GERRY LUDWIG, CEC
well after baking or roasting. They are also non-seasonal, providing chefs with a reliable product that may be offered year-round.
Menu Star: Heirloom Tomatoes
More than any other ingredient, heirloom tomatoes rose to promi- nence on menus in all three of the research cities. They were featured in an almost endless variety of salads, sharing plates and handhelds.
Grown in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, heirloom tomatoes offer sweet flavor profiles with dense, meaty and moist flesh. They also enable chefs to easily create plates with dra- matic eye appeal, as the tomatoes are available in a rainbow of color combinations that include shades of red, yellow, orange, green and purple. The sharing plate of Heirloom Tomatoes at Chicago’s Publican Anker is a sophisticated composition of avocado, bacon, arugula, pea shoots and crispy shallots tossed with oblique chunks of tomato in a simple oil and vinegar dressing. Similarly, the Heirloom Tomatoes at ABCV in New York City combines fresh figs, Per- sian cucumber, pickled red onion and torn herbs
in a shiso ginger dressing.
Multiple varieties of tomato, including beef-
steak, plum and cherry, distinguish the Heirloom Tomato Salad at Ella Elli in Chicago, garnished with thinly shaved curls of cucumber and baby
basil leaves, and finished with a blizzard of powdered aged Feta. While not a particularly attractive presentation, the LT sandwich at Daily Provisions in New York City achieves flavor perfection via an ingredient triad of a single, extra thick slice of heirloom tomato topped with watercress and a lemon-basil aioli. Conversely, the Heirloom Tomato Toast at Chef Zoe Schor’s Split-Rail in Chicago is a portrait-worthy assemblage of sourdough toast spread with Feta cheese mousse, topped with tomato wedges, toasted seeds and soft
herbs drizzled with a jalapeño vinaigrette.
As our research is conducted in the late fall and early winter,
we were gratified and more than a bit surprised to see all of these delicious tomato dishes on offer at a time when the product could certainly not be coming from the local farmers market. The reason of course is that these heirloom tomatoes are in large part being grown hydroponically. Chefs seem to be embracing this expanded availabil- ity, which we view as a welcome departure from the hyper-seasonal mindset that has prevailed over the past decade, which resulted in a nearly complete absence of tomatoes on menus in the months of November and December. pb
Chef Gerry Ludwig, CEC, is a nationally recognized food writer, speaker and trend tracker, and leads the Culinary R&D department for Gordon Food Service, based in Grand Rapids, MI.
Trend Tracking: Produce Menu Stars
produce on the menu
Starting with kale and then progressing to Brussels sprouts and cauliflower, each year a few more vegetables (and fruits) emerge as menu stars, simulta- neously capturing the imaginations of chefs across the country.
PRODUCE BUSINESS / MAY 2019 / 87