Summer Picnic Provisions
Summer is the season for picnics, and while it’s always nice to prepare food for yourself at home, restaurants and companies throughout the city make it easy to luxuriate with special picnic packages, bottled cocktails, and more.
One of the ultimate destinations for picnic provisions is Pastoral Artisan Cheese, Bread and Wine, a retail shop and cafe that happens to excel at precisely the types of foods you’d crave in a good picnic. This year, Pastoral is offering six unique picnic packages. For example, the “Decadent” features bread, cheese, preserves, and cookies, the “Carnivore” is aptly more meat-focused with copious varieties of charcuterie, the “Francophile” has bread, olives, mustard, cheese, and cornichons, and the “Royale Picnic” contains a bit of everything, from wine and cheese to meat, chocolate, honey, and crackers.
When it comes to picnic sipping, a new addition to the market this year is VITANI, which specializes in sleekly bottled martinis. Providing a nice alternative to standard bottles of picnic wine, VITANI brings the craft cocktail bar experience into your home cooler courtesy of husband-wife duo Jackie and Eric Gichner. These ready-to-drink martinis come in classic and contemporary flavors, including Cosmo martinis, dirty martinis, citrus-ginger, cucumber, and elderpear.
Located a stone’s throw from Millennium Park, Grant Park, and the newly opened Maggie Daley Park, Toni Patisserie and Cafe is ideally situated for picnic fodder. Just in time for the onset of summer, the cafe released new “pique-nique” lunch and dinner boxes, each containing an entree, a salad, a side, and dessert. Entree options include ham and Gruyere sandwiches, roast beef, and tuna sandwiches, while salads include Nicoise and Mediterranean. For sides, there’s cips, fruit, or mixed greens, followed by a brownie, chocolate chip cookie, macarons, or shortbread cookies for dessert.
Further down Michigan Avenue, Mercat a la Planxa is another restaurant with convenient access to Grant Park. The Spanish-accented restaurant is offering prepared picnic baskets and specials from chef Evan Behmer. Each basket contains food for two people – think charcuterie, cheese, baguette, grapes – with options to add on more items or beverages like bottled cocktails and wine.
Things get even meatier at TÊTE Charcuterie, where chefs Kurt Guzowski and Thomas Rice are satiating appetites with picnic-friendly grab-and-go sandwiches. You can choose Parisian ham and Gruyere to Italian sausage, jalapeno-cheddar brat, and pork and liver terrine.
Pastoral Artisan Cheese, Bread and Wine
2945 N. Broadway and other locations, Chicago
(773) 472-4781
Website
VITANI
Website
Toni Patisserie and Cafe
65 E. Washington Street, Chicago
(312) 726-2020
Website
Mercat a la Planxa
638 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago
(312) 765-0524
Website
TÊTE Charcuterie
1114 W. Randolph Street, Chicago
(312) 733-1178
Website
