DEATH to Brussels sprouts. A pox on venison. Burn the turnip fields and let all things bright and luscious replenish the earth.
But as much as I crave spring delectables and an end to winter roots, I’m in no rush for ramps. To my pitiably primitive palate, the early spring harbingers so beloved of New York chefs deliver no more joy than winter root vegetables – if not less.
Most “spring” menu items popping up around town are clever impostors. Frozen soft-shell crabs should be detained at JFK. You won’t catch me mistaking dandelion greens for fresh, local peas or asparagus, which won’t poke through the earth for several weeks more.
A winter that was climatically mild was culinarily bleak: a torrent of gloomy sauces and root vegetables since Labor Day. I’ll croak if I see any another braised short rib buried under slicks of chestnut puree.
They were fine for a transit strike and blizzards, but all wrong for daylight-saving time, which kicks in this weekend.
I want fresh soft-shell crabs in their sweet, crackling and briny glory. Although they’ve begun trickling into a handful of elite places like The Four Seasons, where precious, early season Carolina specimens cost $38, they’re scarce at more affordable prices until May. Meanwhile, truckloads of the garlicky wild leeks known as ramps, embraced by chefs as a trumpet-blast of spring, don’t do the trick for me.
Chefs get even more antsy to kick-start spring than ordinary people. They go to extreme lengths to persuade themselves, at least, that the real primavera is at hand.
Southeast Asian restaurant Rain is one of my favorite exotic places on the Upper West Side. Chef Gypsy Gifford gushes over her floral salad “to celebrate spring – blossoms, sweet and spicy baby Asian greens like mizuna and tatsoi, and a sweet lily bulb dressing” with snapdragons, marigolds, pansies and nasturtium.
The rainbow of greens, oranges and purples is certainly beautiful – but I’d trade it for a single spear of fresh local asparagus after months of the Mexican-grown variety that’s so flavor-shy it must have made the trip by stagecoach.
Bill Telepan, chef-owner of his new, namesake restaurant on West 69th Street and a master of the seasonally driven menu, acknowledges the “spring menu” is a cruel tease.
“Spring gets you excited, but in the Northeast it doesn’t really happen” when the calendar says it should. “My spring menu really starts kicking in May.”
All winter long, Telepan said, “The [Union Square] Greenmarket has just potatoes and apples. And how many things can you do with rutabaga?”
For now, Telepan says, we’ll have to deal with artichokes, young carrots, baby leeks, rhubarb and spring mushrooms like morels, mostly from the Pacific Northwest. Locally, “we start seeing some ramps, fiddleheads and wild dandelions.”
Another seasonally obsessed chef, Tocqueville’s Marco Moreira, says, “When you see sweet Maine shrimp, you say, wow – there is an end to this.”
Yeah, but when? Shad, a traditional spring delight, are running late this year.
“Normally I see them earlier at the Greenmarket, but we’ve been getting some for a few weeks,” Moreira said. “The dandelions are beautiful and we’re pairing them with shad roe.” Oy, more dandelions!
Dona, the southern-European restaurant launched this week by Donatella Arpaia and chef Michael Psilakis, looks like spring with a sunny white and yellow palette. A few dishes even offer a haunting whiff of it. Risotto with a spring-like fantasia of fava beans, English peas, green zucchini, wild arugula and Hawaiian blue prawns all put up a brave front even though none of the goodies are local.
They’re giving it the old Village try at Mas on Downing Street, where chef Galen Zamarra wraps lamb loin in wild ramps, baby vegetables and roasted spring onion puree. I’ll be much happier when they have spring lamb, meaning the animals ate grass, which imparts a gamier flavor than the grain they’re fed indoors.
Moreira said he asked a farmer at the Greenmarket when to expect spring lamb. “His answer was, ‘When you see us not wearing jackets.’ ”