Where to Eat and Drink May Flowers

April showers beget May flowers. But beyond garden fodder and tabletop bouquets, flowers are ripe for eating and drinking. From marigolds to orchids, edible and potable flowers can be had on menus all over town this month.

This season, Senza should be destination number one for edible flower consumption. Chef Noah Sandoval uses pea blossoms and Johnny jump ups in his loup de mer dish, as well as borage flowers with oysters, oxalis flowers with scallops, basil flowers with cheese, sage blossoms with pork belly, and Egyptian star flowers and citrus marigolds with chocolate.

Edible flowers are a prominent springtime player on the dessert menu at The Publican. Pastry chef Anna Shovers exhibits her saccharine green thumb in dishes such as hazelnut financier with kumquat aigre-doux, orange, salted honey caramel, and honey-vanilla ice cream made with marigolds and pansies. She’s also doing a grilled rhubarb ham with mint, fried fennel, red vein sorrel, buckwheat streusel, and sumac.

Trenchermen’s spring menu reads like a gardener’s curriculum. Chef Pat Sheerin works with basil blooms, nasturtiums, and coriander flowers throughout his menu alongside items such as octopus posole, oats, and beets.

Your dream destination for all things edible and floral is North Pond. Seeing as the restaurant is basically a secret garden in and of itself located in the heart of Lincoln Park, it’s no surprise that Bruce Sherman’s menu is readily rife with flora. The rigorously seasonal menu changes often, but expect to find everything from violas to dianthus and chive blossoms speckled across the menus.

Here’s a fun fact: those gorgeous flowers adorning all the cocktails at Three Dots and a Dash? You can eat them. Edible orchids and marigolds come on every cocktail at the subterranean tiki bar. Not only do they add a lustrous flourish to the elaborate libations, but they make for a nice aromatic nosh as well. New spring cocktails include the Pearl Diver made with aged Guyanese rum, overproof Guyanese rum, Curacao, lime, gardenia mix, and angostura bitters; No Bye, No Aloha made with gin, spiced rum, passion fruit, lemon, Oloroso sherry, orgeat, falernum, and absinthe; and Don’t Touch My Bikini, with genever, coconut, lime, hellfire shrub, and angostura bitters.

Nellcote is also doing some illustrious work with potable flowers. The aptly dubbed Dead Flowers cocktail features ice cubes infused with micro star flowers from Corneil Farms, immersed in pisco, Combier Liquer de Rose, lemon, and simple syrup. As all drinks at Nellcote are named after Rolling Stones’ songs, Dead Flowers garnered inspiration from the Combier, which mixologist Melissa Pinkerton describes as floral and sweet, like biting into a flower.

In other floral cocktail news, Cicchetti’s Green Dragon Punch features edible orchids, pansies, and/or snapdragons atop a mix of Green Dragon Green Tea, Smith & Cross rum, Jamaican #2 bitters, fresh-squeezed lemon juice, and sugar. Then there’s La Padrona, a spring-tastic mix of rhubarb consommé, CH Distillery gin, St-Germain, rhubarb bitters, and an edible orchid garnish.

Senza
2873 N. Broadway, Chicago
(773) 770-3527
Website

The Publican
837 W. Fulton Market, Chicago
(312) 733-9555
Website

Trenchermen
2039 W. North Avenue, Chicago
(773) 661-1540
Website

North Pond
2610 N. Cannon Drive, Chicago
(773) 477-5845
Website

Three Dots and a Dash
435 N. Clark Street, Chicago
(312) 610-4220
Website

Nellcote
833 W. Randolph Street, Chicago
(312) 432-0500
Website

Cicchetti
671 N. St. Clair Street, Chicago
(312) 642-1800
Website