Third Annual Chefs' Dinner Benefiting Comfort Station

On November 3, Lula Cafe’s Jason Hammel will host the third annual Logan Square Chef's Dinner to benefit Comfort Station Logan Square, a multidisciplinary arts space that provides free cultural programming for the surrounding community.

Since 2010, Comfort Station has held monthly art exhibitions, weekly films and concerts, potlucks, workshops, and lectures — each year further establishing itself as a micro-cultural center in the heart of Logan Square. Much of Comfort Station's operating and programming expenses are covered through donations and sponsorships from local patrons and businesses, with the annual Chef Dinner being the largest single source of funding that the organization receives each year.

Joining Jason in Lula’s kitchen — and in his conscious, culinary pursuits — are some of the neighborhood's most exciting chefs: Jared Wentworth (Longman & Eagle), Abraham Conlon (Fat Rice), Jared Van Camp (the forthcoming OWEN + ALCHEMY), Tony Bezsylko, Ethan Pikas and Justin Behlke (Cellar Door Provisions), Matthias Merges (Yusho) and Alfredo Nogueira (Analogue).

It’s a group comprised of celebrated artists in their own medium (food!), so naturally this dream team of local epicurean talent will collaborate on a six-course feast. Over the past four years, Logan Square has become a culinary destination in Chicago, and this annual Logan Square Chef's Dinner reflects the broad array of talent that is located in the blocks surrounding Comfort Station.

Tickets are available for purchase via this link for $165 per person — inclusive of all food, beverages, tax and gratuity. The evening begins at 6pm with cocktails and hors d'oeuvres.

Rosé All Day

Like Lula Cafe, the Matthiasson vineyards and wine production is very much about family, community and sustainability. We both consider those three values inextricable, and to that end, offering their very fine rosé all summer long was a natural inclination on our part.  

Steve and Jill Klein Matthiasson, the vineyard’s proprietors, play an integral role in the wine-making and farming communities in California. Both have had life-long careers in sustainable agriculture, and they continue to apply those ideals of balance, restraint, and respect for the individual—and for the whole—to their wine. Their approach is simple but careful, a concept that is central to the tradition of viticulture and winemaking. Respect for this tradition forms the core of their work. And their hands literally touch every vine and every bottle.

Matthiasson’s 2013 rosé was made from a combination of Grenache, Syrah, Mouvedre, and Counoise from the Windmill vineyard in the Dunnigan Hills, along with Syrah grapes from the Kahn Vineyard in Lovell Valley.

Right now, we think the perfect pairing for this wine is a sunny seat on our patio.

Radishes: From City Farm to Your Plate

Something most people don't realize about Lula is just how many vegetables we serve every day — in fact, over half of our food costs are for veggies! We have our own grow room, at least four times a year we create an all-vegetarian Farm Dinner, and every night of the week (except Tuesdays, of course) we offer a six course vegetarian tasting menu. Plain and simple: Lula loves veggies.

We're always working to source vegetables from the best and closest farmers, and sometimes those farmers are right here in the city. Watch a bunch of radishes make a sunny afternoon trip from a City Farm location to your plate in Logan Square:

Vimeo

Halo-Halo

While she was living in LA, our pastry chef Kelly Helgesen would follow her sweet tooth to Jollibee. Popular on the West Coast, this fast food chain serves up Filipino-inspired fast food, including their version of a traditional ice cream dessert known as Halo-Halo.

Tagalog for “mix-mix,” the treat is commonly served with boiled kidney beans, garbanzos, sugar palm fruit (kaong), coconut sport (macapuno), and plantains caramelized in sugar, jackfruit (langkâ), gulaman, tapioca, nata de coco, sweet potato (kamote), cheese, and pounded crushed young rice (pinipig).

The dish is constructed by placing most of the ingredients (fruits, beans, and other sweets) inside a tall glass. Top it with shaved ice and sprinkled sugar, the top it off with either leche flan, purple yam (ubeng pula), or ice cream. For good measure, evaporated milk is poured into the mixture upon serving.

Kelly’s version, which is now on Lula’s dessert menu, is a Midwestern spin on her favorite Filipino dessert: strawberry ice cream, strawberries macerated with shiso*, vanilla shaved ice, candied fava beans, lychee pearls, flan, popped sorghum, and strawberry syrup.

Or, as Jason Hammel describes it: Halo-Halo is the adult equivalent to going to an ice cream parlor and asking for every single topping.

*The berry season changes quickly, and we’re already on to stone fruits! Look for sweet cherries in lieu of strawberries now...

PQM vs LULA

Every Tuesday night, Publican Quality Meats hosts Burger, Bourbon and Beer Night. The weekly series takes place from 6-9:00pm, and features two dueling burgers: The PQM Burger (which stays on the menu from week to week) and a rotating special burger from a guest chef. This week, Lula Cafe's own Jason Hammel will be battling it out for burger bragging rights. Use your usually Lula-less Tuesday night to come cheer us on!

Publican Quality Meats | 825 W. Fulton Market Street | 312-445-8977 

Monday Night's Farm Dinner: Vegetarian!

Genesis Growers

Four or five times a year, just when the season is at its brightest (or darkest, really, on that February day when we have to look, like, real deep at the turnips), we decide to create a totally vegetarian Farm Dinner. Now, if you didn't know, we offer a tasting menu every night of the week of vegetarian cooking — six courses, four of them savory, one cheese, one sweet — which give guests a chance to see what we can do with the season's finest. But creating three new dishes all at once takes a different level of imagination.

We like to imagine repetition and mimicry in food. Things becoming one another. Like when a flavor in a mid-winter apple just happens to mirror the flavor of a slice of turnip dressed with honey, nutmeg, and a splash of lemon; when the shape of a dumpling just happens to look like a scallop, or a new potato, or a heart of palm.

Last year we did a spaghetti squash salad where we shredded the meat of the squash and spread it flat on the plate in a crazed shredded yellow nest. We loved the way the squash swirled and turned, how it hid the other ingredients on the plate and made the act of eating it a discovery.

So, the nest, we thought. Let's make another nest.

This week at the market, Vicki from Genesis Growers is offering her tender haricot verts — the fancy tender thin cousins of the green bean. Our idea (if it works!) is to turn those into a nest of green, by cutting them lengthwise into svelte, twig-like patterns, with little surprises "nestled" within. Bright, juicy tiny cherry tomatoes, or ground cherries, or slices of plum. Roasted pepper, maybe cheese. We don't know yet because as I'm writing this, it's Wednesday, we've only been back from the market for an hour or two, and the idea is new, fresh, unformed — just a little egg waiting for something to emerge.

— Jason Hammel

Make your reservation by calling 773-489-9554 or visiting lulacafe.com.

Walk-ins are always welcome!

In addition to the Farm Dinner menu, our Café and Specials menus are also available on

Monday evenings.

Elder/Cauli/Flower

Once we get past the first few weeks of asparagus and rhubarb at the market, it’s a race to see how we can use each ingredient at the peak of its season. And some seasons are shorter than others, like elderflowers, which will only be available for a few more weeks. We’ve been readying this elderflower vinaigrette over the past few days to pair with cauliflower.

Look for the elder/cauli/flower pairing on the first course of tonight's Farm Dinner:

#BestOfChi

Thank you to all the Chicago Reader readers who voted in this year's #BestOfChi reader's poll!

Best Brunch

Best Neighborhood Restaurant

Best Waitstaff

Best Looking Waitstaff

Country/Morning

Listen to Lula Cafe's co-founder Amalea Tschilds sing some country songs with Nora O'Connor on the Morning Shift:

Lula's Walls: Claire Ashley

The art at Lula is curated by two friends who used to work here when we had just the old single storefront.  Like me, they were young artists at the beginning of their careers who for lack of better options ended up working as a server and cook.   Now grown up, Marianne Fairbanks and Anders Nilsen have enviable careers in the art world but continue to curate the walls of Lula's to exceptional ends.  I still cook.  

Having a "cafe" in our name might take the expectations down a notch in art-cred terms, but Lula considers itself a gallery on equal terms to others in the city.   In fact the SAIC President once said to an incoming freshman class that Lula was one of the best places to see new art in Chicago.   Anders and Marianne search the city for exciting talent, do studio tours, map out a design for the space, price work fairly, and hang the art with the intent of creating conversations-- between the work and the space, between us employees, between our guests.

I try to let the curatorial team do their thing without interruption, closing my eyes to early images and press materials.  On those four Tuesdays a month, when the shows change and a new artist hangs her work, I find excuses to stay away until late that night when everyone is gone.  (I'm not sure Marianne or Anders knows this; up till now it was my secret.) Then I'll walk back over to the restaurant, turn on all the lights at once, and let the work reveal itself in a sudden flash of bright light. This moment of surprise is one of the great joys of my job at Lula, of seeing what (and who) Anders and Marianne have discovered, of giving myself time to experience the work in a personal and private way, of letting go.  

I hope you'll come by to see the amazing work of Claire Ashley.  And please come to the opening party.  It's Tuesday night, 7-9pm, with a complimentary hors d'oeuvres and a cash bar, and the space will be open for you to experience the same thing that I get to do, on those late nights, since I have the key, when I sneak back in for a private viewing of what our Lula has next in store for me.  

- Jason Hammel

Farm Dinner: Green Strawberries + Chamomile

Sometimes we seem to write a menu based on the sound of the words alone. Their tone. The beat of them. You say "green strawberry, chamomile" out loud once or twice and suddenly the combination seems to sing. Strawberries are not green, of course, and the words kind of prick up in your ears -- they sound strange and compelling. Yet chamomile is the softest of words, a sedative, and it kind of just drifts in and steeps. It's in the meter, yes, the anapest of chamomile, three unstressed syllables in a row. Taking it easy.

This week we are pairing tart unripe green strawberries with the fresh flowers of chamomile we grew on our own roof top garden. This isn't a classic combo, but it's not experimental either. Really it's just a marriage of bright-sour-green-fresh with floral-wispy-sweet-grassy. If it makes sense on the palate remains to be seen, as we are just now clipping the chamomile from the stems and just now pickling the green strawberries in a little honey and white vinegar.

We take the risk because that's what farm dinner is about. The chance to listen to the sounds around us, to steal the flowers of the moment, and combine.

Mark your calendar...

We're having a summer bazaar!

Farm Dinner: Loveliest of trees

A few years ago there was an early spring in March that you might remember fondly. A stretch of weeks of hauntingly warm weather, as if a spell cast by a mysterious friend had let us skip a season and jump headlong into summer. For the fruit farmers of Michigan that warmth was no robin, but rather a bitter harbinger of a 100 year disaster; a total crop failure of cherries, apples, apricots, and plums. The trees had been tricked into blossoming before the last frost had passed. Once the cold came they would fall and die and leave an unproductive orchard.

Abby from Klug Farm came into the restaurant with buckets of blossoms trimmed from a cherry tree that would surely bear no fruit at all, once the spell had been broken and the early mornings turned cold again. She was cutting these before they fell. Maybe we could do something with the flowers? They were gorgeous - maybe more beautiful in dying - but an errant brush of your hand would send them all scattering to the ground.  

We made a batch of cherry blossom vinegar that was fragrant and sweet, yet still ripe and tender, and we used it to splash on raw fish for an appetizer.  I don't recall the dish or the recipes, but I remember the buckets of blossoms and what I had learned about the dark side of a really sunny set of days.

Ever since then I ask Abby about cherry blossoms and whether we can have some to make vinegar.  She's reluctant to trim the trees because the fruit they will bear has a value that the flowers do not.  (Seedling Farm, on the other hand, saves a few trees just for the purpose and you can buy a tender branch from Peter and force the blossoms yourself.  Makes for a beautiful centerpiece.) I was able to get a few branches from Abby for a dinner we did last week for Kinfolk Magazine down in Hyde Park's Plein Air Cafe, and the leftover branches got my sous chef Sarah thinking...

What can we do with cherry wood? Since the sweet fragrant flavor is often preferred for smoking, would it work for us in other applications? We loved the vinegar we had made with the blossoms - could we do something more robust, earthy, heartier, with the bark and the wood itself?  

This morning we have a pot of cream on the stove with the trimmings of that blossoming branch wrapped in cheesecloth as though it were a sprig of thyme. We hope it will infuse flavor into this neutral palate and then, when thickened into creme fraiche, transform into something uniquely subtle, spring-like, beautiful.

Using a peeler we will scrape and shave the branches into a jar of moscatel vinegar, apply a little heat, and let it steep for a few days. And lastly, we will throw the remaining branches, doused with water, on a set of well-tended coals and gently smoke some marrow.

Come see what we make with these things at Monday night's Farm Dinner. We are cooking with the seasons, whether spring comes in April or in late May, whether it snows like it did last week, like it did one night, for Housman, too, sometime long ago:

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It leaves me only fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

- Jason Hammel

Kinfolk's L’Espirit de la Mer Dinner

Last week, our own Jason Hammel joined Art Jackson (Pleasant House, Plein Air Cafe & Eatery), Hunter Moore (Parson’s Chicken & Fish), and Cosmo Goss (Publican) to celebrate l’espirit de la mer at Hyde Park's newest restaurant addition — Plein Air Cafe & Eatery. 

Click through for Amanda Jane Jones' beautiful photos of Kinfolk's potluck style-meal made by some of Chicago's favorite chefs and bakers:

Chicago Reader Cocktail Challenge

Lula bartender Celina Dzyacky was challenged with hard boiled eggs in this latest edition of Chicago Reader's Cocktail Challenge:

"The drink kind of looks like [something from] the milk bar from A Clockwork Orange," Celina said. "You might not want to drink it outside on a hot day, but you might want to drink it in a really creepy, dark milk bar in London."

Next up, Celina challenges another familiar face from Lula, Jonathan Van Herik, with bacon bits!

Spring is Reactive: Rhubarb at this Monday's Farm Dinner

I've been asked many times how we decide what to make for Farm Dinner on Monday nights. Wednesday mornings our chefs have coffee together at a neighborhood joint we like and stare at each other until the ideas finally (painfully, sometimes) emerge. Truth is, the winter stare goes long. In the cold months we think a lot about flavor combinations that we might not have tried before but which are somehow evocative. Carrot and caraway, for example. The words imitate each other, the flavors reach out for sweetness, for 'caramel,' and we think of palm sugar or honey or molasses. So then you get duck, carrot, candied caraway, or something like that.

But spring is different. Spring is reactive, almost defensively reactive. So much stuff comes bursting through. It gets kind of crazy in here. Garlic mustards! Radishes! Nettles! All of a sudden what was bare is now full and bright and alive.

Here's a text message and my open notebook. Five minutes earlier I got a call from someone: Hey, Slagel Farm has rhubarb. Rhubarb? From LouisJohn? Yes, not expected, but he has some rhubarb and he needs to know right now if we want it. Kelly looks at me, the coffee is cold, and says, I was thinking rhubarb, almond, mascarpone. Text him. I pick up the phone. There's only twenty pounds left. Not much. We'll take it all.

— Jason Hammel

Make your reservation by calling 773-489-9554 or visiting opentable.com/lula-cafe. 

Walk-ins are always welcome!

In addition to the Farm Dinner menu, our Café and Specials menus are also available on Monday evenings.

When Spring is a Tease

When spring is a tease, it helps to have your own grow room. All winter long our gardener, Jennifer Rosenthal, tends to mustard greens and red sorrel, lovage and minutina, so that we can pick tender leaves and shoots just before we need them. And while everyone is hunting for the first morels and ramps, the grow room is still active these first May mornings. It helps us get through those days when we have to jump over cold puddles on a grey skied walk to work. Since I live so close, my walk is just a hop-and-skip over Logan Boulevard, but these five minutes tell us what kind of day it will be. What we will have to rely on. Get out the scissors — it's a grow-room kind of morning.   

Yes, we have a box of onions from Vicki and some ramps from a forest nearby. But we'll need to count on our sprouts and herbs to brighten up these last frigid days before we move with any pace toward a real spring.

          

Long thaws in Chicago, I've learned. But the market opens this week. We'll see you there. 

- Jason Hammel 

 

Make your reservation by calling 773-489-9554 or visiting opentable.com/lula-cafe. 

Walk-ins are always welcome!

In addition to the Farm Dinner menu, our Café and Specials menus are also available on 

Monday evenings.

Spring is near!

Since opening Lula in 1999, I've had this rule about Spring: no asparagus until the Klugs bring it in from Michigan. But it's been such a long, long winter - and a chef's dogma tends to get weak with age, right?  So I'm breaking my own rule for this Monday night's Farm Dinner.

This wild asparagus was foraged in Oregon. The West Coast's wild asparagus season is usually just two or three weeks long, like a snapshot dream of what's to come in the Chicago markets of May, when Mick Klug will bring his steady supply and fill our menus, both brunch and dinner, with the premier vegetable of spring.

So come on in this Monday night! We're serving this foraged asparagus for the first course at Farm Dinner, our Monday tradition of experimentation and seasonality and whim. (In the decade-plus that we've been doing Farm Dinner, we've never repeated a dish. How many new ideas have been created since '99? Somebody did the math once and it gave me vertigo.)

Thanks to Rod Markus at Rare Tea Cellars for finding this amazing wild green and jumbo white asparagus. If you don't know him, he's #39 on New City's 'The Big Heat' list published last week, and man for all seasons for us cooks in Chicago.

  

- Jason Hammel 

Make your reservation by calling 773-489-9554 or visiting opentable.com/lula-cafe. 

Walk-ins are always welcome!

In addition to the Farm Dinner menu, our Café and Specials menus are also available on Monday evenings.

Jungle Byrd

Jungle Birds are making a real comeback these days. A tiki drink invented in 1978 at the Kuala Lumpur Hilton, right at the tail end of the first wave of tiki's popularity, this recipe is striking a chord with modern cocktail enthusiasts. Robert Simonson of The New York Times explores all the reasons behind the resurgence in this recent story, and here at Lula, we've put our own little spin on the recipe: 

Jungle Byrd - Black Strap Rum, Campari, Byrrh, Pineapple, Lime

Disappears

Have you ever wondered what happens on Tuesday nights when Lula’s closed? Mostly, we’re just closed, but sometimes we’re doing this:

Read more at Filter.