(Photo by Holly Eitenmiller / for Chronicle Media)įuchs bakes the café’s specialty sourdough bread with a four-year old starter that began with the juice of local peaches. Harvest Café owner Libby Mathers spared little expense when renovating the 1890s building, which features hand-crafted woodwork and custom-ordered landscape work by west coast artist Don Tiller. Recent selections included parsnip and leek soup, roasted beet salad, shiitake mushroom pizza, pork loin with mushroom risotto, duck breast and oyster mushroom. In the kitchen, Myszkowski’s odyssey culminates in a menu nothing short of gourmet. Each are pedigreed Head chef, Kyle Wilkinson, was schooled at Le Cordon Bleu, Sous chef Ashton Fuchs, studied culinary at Kendall College in Chicago. The ingredients are then handed off to the café’s free-range chefs, who are given carte blanche over the menu. Items like scallops, tuna, crabmeat and French morels, he said, are ordered fresh and premium from top U.S. “If it’s not in season, though, like tomatoes, we just won’t have them,” Myszkowski said of the only downside of F2T. Ordering french toast? The syrup will come from Funk’s Grove in Shirley. Henry’s Farm in Congerville specializes in produce, including arugula, rutabagas and parsnips. Lamb is raised at Knob Hill Farm in Greenview. The rabbit comes from Blue Fig Farms of Normal. It goes something like this Myszkowski, the hunter-gatherer, scouts for farms that specialize in sustainable agriculture and orders the best meat, dairy and seasonal produce on hand. “We work really hard to bring the best there is in Illinois to our customers.” “Being listed first of the nine with Only In Your State, we’re really proud of that,” manager Kevin Myszkowski said. The number of farm-to-table, F2T, restaurants is on the rise, and, in March, Harvest Café was named by Only In Your State as one of the top nine F2T establishments in Illinois. Then, there are places like Harvest Café in Delavan, a farm-to-table inn where the menu evolves from locally-grown ingredients. And though the cuisine may taste good, is it good for you? They’re everywhere popular restaurant chains with crowd-pleasing menus. (Photo by Holly Eitenmiller / for Chronicle Media) The restaurant will feature a limited number of Chicago-style hot dogs on nights when national baseball teams play. Harvest Café head chef Kyle Wilkinson recently began making hot dogs in-house from local pork.
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