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: