mk Serves Up an Homage to Alice Waters

Alice Waters has long been esteemed as one of the forebears of the farm-to-table movement in restaurants, so it makes sense that chefs would want to honor her via special tasting menus. And that’s precisely what Michael Kornick and Erick Williams of mk are doing with a degustation dedicated to the culinary wunderkind herself.

Served as an homage to Waters and her restaurant Chez Panisse, as well as the indelible impact she’s had on the restaurant community in its entirety, the special menu pays due diligence to sustainability and seasonality, tenants inherently pivotal to the mk kitchen. Upon recently visiting Waters, Kornick and Williams were driven to take their inspirations a step further by crafting a menu in her honor, donating a portion of proceeds to Waters’ Edible Schoolyard Project.

Available at mk through the rest of the year, the tasting menu starts with caviar, buckwheat blinis, and crème fraîche, followed by cauliflower soup with steamed Dungeness crab and chervil. Next is hand-cut fettuccine with bottarga di tonno, garlic breadcrumbs, parsley, and Tuscan olive oil. This is followed by Mississippi bobwhite quail with Touluse sausage, flageolets beans, and wilted escarole. The final savory course consists of braised lamb, pearl onions, chanterelle mushrooms, and turnips, before a cheese course is served with French cow’s milk cheese and Burgundy-poached pears. Dessert winds down with Alice’s preserved fruit cake, Marcona almonds, honey gastrique, and coffee ice cream.

mk
868 N. Franklin Street, Chicago
(312) 482-9179
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