Note to Chicago farm-to-table restaurants: You have competition. Strong competition. Competition that’s likely to keep me out of your dining rooms for the rest of the summer. And here’s the kicker: Your competition is the farmers market where you get your produce, because those markets are themselves becoming pretty good restaurants.
Take this past weekend. I arrived at Green City Market early and hungry. I hadn’t eaten breakfast, because I knew there was going to be plenty there that I wanted to eat. And I’m not talking berries here. I’m talking burgers. A young company called Eat Green Foods has a stand at Green City where they grill Heartland Meat patties, top them with heirloom tomatoes, and serve them on buns slathered with a seasonal aioli. I figured it would be an economical breakfast choice—so big and filling that I wouldn’t have to eat again until dinner.
But when I got to their stand, I saw that they had an entire menu of hot foods to choose from, so I decided to go for an egg sandwich with prosciutto, gruyere, and tomatoes instead. Okay, maybe I also had some of my boyfriend’s healthier-than-thou breakfast of granola with local yogurt and berries.
Now I was ready to stop eating and start shopping. I was on the hunt for some good pickling cucumbers and I found them—lemon cucumbers, which are the shape and color of grapefruit. But I almost dropped them to the ground when I noticed that the Floriole Bakery, a nearby stand, had just taken the tin foil off a pan of still-warm bread pudding. It was made with their own brioche and layered with caramel and pound upon pound of sweet-tart berries. I ordered a portion and discovered that it was enormous—it seemed like a half loaf of bread and a full pint of berries. Not that that deterred me. I sat down on a nearby bench and polished off the entire thing.
And just like that, the farm-to-table restaurant had been rendered temporarily useless to me. Sure, when the market ends, I’ll return. Maybe if I’m lucky I’ll eat at places like Vie, where they preserve tomatoes and other summer produce. But until then, I’ll be at the market, doing the farm-to-table thing renegade-style: no table needed.
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