It’s hot y’all. That’s why we’ve got crudités on the brain. Crudités, plain and simple, is an appetizer dish consisting of various raw chopped fresh vegetables and it’s bound to help keep you cool out there. Here are a few spots around town that are nailing this summer treat right now.
Little Jack’s Tavern on King serves up their crudités plate ($8.50) with a non-local base of English cucumbers, romaine lettuce hearts, asparagus. These are paired with a variety of local seasonal vegetables that can include shishito peppers, watermelon radish, French breakfast radish, cherry tomatoes, okra, squash, zucchini, squash blossoms, and baby carrots. All of it is then touched up with a little olive oil and sea salt for flavor and served with a slightly creamy avocado mousse.
With summer comes a vegetable bounty and The Park Cafe is capitalizing on that with its continually changing crudités ($9.50). Favorite veggies that might be included are cauliflower, green beans, beets, heirloom peppers, radishes of all sorts, and carrots. These vegetables are served (and here’s the special part) with a mushroom and walnut paté made fresh in house.
Harold’s Cabin calls their vegetable dish the Forage Board ($12). It includes seasonal veggies that are grown and harvested from the restaurant’s own rooftop garden. The actual fruits and veggies involved vary week to week but can include radishes, carrots, strawberries, cucumbers, kale, mushrooms, and spring onions. These vegetables are served with various vegetable purees like black garlic, pea, carrot, and cauliflower.
Butcher and Bee’s current board ($14), which changes all the time, has cherry tomatoes, blackberries, grilled zucchini, pickled ramps, pickled turnips, and pickled cauliflower. They call it a Vegetable Board and it pays homage to charcuterie boards rather than to crudités — meaning most of the vegetables are cooked rather than raw.
Aunt Harriet’s is a pop-up dinner series put on by Sarah Adams and Nikki Anhalt, the women behind The Bad Bitches, a lady-led pop-up dinner series aimed at empowering women in the F&B industry. Since that series, Adams and Anhalt have moved on to start Aunt Harriet’s, a dinner series in honor of her Adams’ grandmother, and a crudités starts every meal. For Adams’ raw veggie plates, it’s all about the sauce. She serves up a Japanese steakhouse style ginger, a chimichurri, and a sweet pickled chili sauces. If you want to taste test Aunt Harriet’s crudités, grab a ticket to Sunday’s dinner ($75).
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