A Taste of New Tasting Menus
Gone are the days when tasting menus were confined to haughty, expensive restaurants that demanded multiple hours of dinnertime. These days, chefs are having fun and mixing it up by imbuing tasting menus with more options. Here’s a taste of a few new tasting menus around town.
For diners looking for something a little more elaborate at lunchtime, GT Fish & Oyster offers a three-course prix fixe lunch menu. The menu allows guests to get a more full-fledged experience in a modest amount of time. Each course comes with options, including popular GT standouts like shrimp bruschetta, seared tuna salad, smoked whitefish panini, tuna BLT, and key lime pie.
If a few dishes isn’t enough at Lincoln Park’s BOKA, chef Lee Wolen’s new seven-course tasting menu should exceed expectations. The chef accents his seasonal menu with a rotating miscellany of dishes created daily, highlighting ingredients found at the farmers’ market to exhibit the best in Midwestern sourcing. Some recent examples of items served as part of the tasting menu include suckling pig, squab, green chickpeas, and sweetbreads.
At The Florentine, the kitchen is honing in on seasonal stone fruits for their monthly tasting menu, which is available through July (another themed tasting menu is on deck for August). This is another lunch prix fixe option, featuring three courses of farm-fresh fare focused on the key ingredient. The menu includes Burrata with grilled Michigan peaches; roasted chicken with charred apricot panzanella and cherry agri-dolce; and pistachio tart with pistachio cream, almond brittle, and coconut sorbetto.
GT Fish & Oyster
531 N. Wells Street, Chicago
(312) 929-3501
Website
BOKA
1729 N. Halsted Street, Chicago
(312) 337-6070
Website
The Florentine
151 W. Adams Street, Chicago
(312) 660-8866
Website