Feld isn’t quite a local farm-to-table restaurant in Chicago, but instead chef and owner Jake Potashnick describes it earnestly as relationship-to-table. After a special cheese dinner plus a 27-course tasting menu, it has surprisingly become one of my favorite dining experiences.
Those courses could be tiny, from a teeny teacup of hot chicken broth infused with the aged Alpine echo of Pleasant Ridge Reserve cheese, to a Midwestern fairground in miniature, with a squiggly sweet funnel cake dusted with aromatic spicebush berry sugar.
They were in large part decidedly delicious and utterly fun, with minimalism masking the technical precision of not just Potashnick, but his team of accomplished cooks at Feld, in the Ukrainian Village neighborhood.
“Feld is a relationship-to-table fine-dining restaurant driven by the produce coming from the farmers and fishermen and ranchers that we work directly with, hand in hand, creating a menu based around their product, and trying to highlight it with as little manipulation as possible,” the chef said.
One of those relationships is with Andy Hatch, award-winning cheese maker of the firm that produces Pleasant Ridge Reserve cheese and coveted soft and seasonal Rush Creek Reserve cheese. Hatch and his wife, Caitlin Hatch, were the guests of honor at the cheese dinner. They own and operate Uplands Cheese with another family in Dodgeville, Wisconsin, where Potashnick and his team visited over the summer. (Full disclosure: I also visited the dairy farm before I started working at the Tribune as a guest on a cheese media tour, and both Hatch and Potashnick recognized me at the dinner, my first of two visits to the restaurant.)
The current cheese course, with warm and wild Rush Creek simply spooned against a quenelle of earthy parsnip ice cream, encapsulates Feld in many ways, Potashnick said.
“It’s a perfect product that we highlight with another little thing,” he said.
What’s curious is that the chef considers the cheese course a signature dish since Rush Creek is so rare and fleeting.
“For better or for worse, I think whatever cheese dish we’re doing at Feld now is becoming the signature,” Potashnick said, laughing.
Do note, I was fully aware of the controversy around his opening cheese course, a vertical tasting of Pleasant Ridge made on three different days to show their distinctive flavors.
“What’s interesting is that dish was controversial to people who just saw pictures of it,” Potashnick said.
It was just three slices of cheese.
“Our food is very minimalist,” he said. “It doesn’t photograph amazingly well, I’m the first to admit it.”
They had people ask why the cheese wasn’t served on grass or with labels, the chef said.
Instead, that opening cheese course was served on handmade dishes by Terrafirma Ceramics along with fond firsthand stories of meeting Hatch and his cows at Uplands on their actual grass. Terrafirma was founded more than 40 years ago by artist Ellen Evans, whose daughter and sales director Jessica Evans is Potashnick’s best friend from college.
“I understand why the photographs make people online laugh,” the chef said. “But the people who experienced it found it fascinating, and I think that’s what’s really important.”
I will say that Feld’s food can be photographed well, even when it’s the latest evolution of the seemingly simple signature cheese course, with funky Rush Creek grounded with silky parsnip ice cream. But I do wish it was served with the beautiful bloomy rind.
The ethereal chocolate mousse, though, is the only dish that’s been consistently on the menu, Potashnick said. It varies, of course, but more subtly. The variation I had was deeply dark with a crackling hidden heart of black walnut praline.
But it always starts with bean-to-bar chocolate by Svenska Kakao.
“The only reason we have that chocolate is because I’m really good friends with the owner of that chocolate factory from living in the tiny town in Sweden, Skåne-Tranås, where it’s located,” the chef said. “They are obsessed with the sourcing of their cocoa beans in the way we are obsessed with the sourcing of a parsnip.”
My chocolate mousse began with a tropical 90% extra dark chocolate made with single-origin beans from Uganda, and finished with caramelized black walnuts from a farm in Hammond, Indiana.
They’re a hint of the local and global origins of Feld and Potashnick. The restaurant’s name means field in German. The chef grew up in Lakeview, worked under Phillip Foss at EL Ideas, then around the world at Daniel Berlin Krog in Sweden, Kichisen in Japan, La Marine in France, Ernst in Germany and last as head chef at Barra in Berlin before moving back to Chicago.
“But also, my mom’s maiden name is Rosenfeld, which means field of roses,” he said.
Another world away, the chef took his team to Maine in September, to visit Sue Buxton, the pioneering sustainable seafood supplier, who sends their scallops from Stonington on Deer Isle.
At Feld, they become the dish called Sue’s scallop, stunning and seared on just one side, on a buttery sherry cream sauce with an umami-rich black garlic vinaigrette.
From surf to turf, a gorgeous mahogany roasted duck may be presented for your consideration a few courses later. It’s one of just 550 ducks a year available from Troy King at Au Bon Canard in Caledonia, Minnesota. Aged 34 days, the Moulard bird is the main course, with a pair of perfectly pink slices on a tart quince sauce with a side of tender grilled heart, a bold move in fine dining.
For the grand finale, that nostalgic spicebush funnel cake arrives with a plate bearing Grandma’s golden shortbread, a crisp bite-sized pecan potato pie and complex maple candy coin. A warm custom-scented towel precedes an ice-cold wedge of juicy Asian pear, from Oriana Kruszewski of Oriana’s Orchard.
And then there’s the trio of exquisite house-made cordials on the nonalcoholic pairing menu. Nathan Ducker, beverage manager and general manager, makes the extraordinary elixirs with blood peaches, red beets and smoked apples. Ducker was previously a sommelier at Bar Mar and Bazaar Meat by José Andrés. His expert experience was clear.
The dining room is set around two large islands where the staff finishes final platings. Two banquettes along the walls seat about 20 diners when full. It is dinner as theater in the round.
Another item that may be presented is a whole lobe of foie gras, also from Au Bon Canard. It’s not nearly as pretty, I have to say, even as someone who worked with the fatty duck liver nearly every day at my station when I cooked at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris.
During the cheese dinner, a pair of rare slices were served over grits from Meadowlark Farm & Mill in Ridgeway, Wisconsin, with lactic acid-fermented Cape gooseberries and ‘nduja butter. I loved all the elements, but together they were just unnervingly soft.
The canelé with cheese ice cream at that dinner, with a salty meringue shard and warm rosemary caramel sauce, had the opposite problem, with the pastry lost underneath, and making it all hard to eat by spoon.
But on the full-tasting menu, the foie gras was cooked a touch more with the canelé on the side, and that pairing was astounding. The lush liver, glazed with a caramelized onion jus, with charred pearl onions on the side, plus the perfect caramel-encrusted confection, had me wondering why this wasn’t the national French standard.
Ducker jokes that if they open another business, it should just be canelé foie gras sandwiches, Potashnick said.
And the salty meringue shard and warm rosemary caramel sauce found a much better match with plum pit ice cream and delicate butternut squash.
The Pleasant Ridge vertical tasting will be back, the chef said. They just ran out of those three cheeses and he needs to go back up to taste with Hatch.
Meanwhile, you’ll find a bit grated over a fantastic fried and smoked sunchoke dish with fragrant allium oil and celeriac butter.
But not until early next year, when Potashnick and his terrific team come back from winter break, well deserved after days of complicated prep and nights of flawless service.
Staff wellness is important at Feld. A 20% service charge goes completely to the team and they all have health insurance, the chef said.
“We’re about to close for a three-and-a-half week break, where I’m gonna pay them all,” he said. “When I say Feld is driven by people, I really mean, it’s driven by supporting the people involved in the business.”
“And we have the best staff meals,” he said, laughing.
I can’t say, since I haven’t had it at one of my unexpectedly favorite new restaurants anywhere.
Feld
2018 W. Chicago Ave.
Open: Wednesday to Saturday, 7 p.m. (single seating); closed Dec. 25 to Jan. 15 for winter break
Prices: $195 (tasting menu), $130 (beverage pairing), $95 (nonalcoholic beverage pairing)
Noise: OK (67 to 70 dB)
Accessibility: Wheelchair-accessible with restrooms on single level
Tribune rating: Outstanding to excellent, 3.5 of 4 stars
Ratings key: Four stars, outstanding; three stars, excellent; two stars, very good; one star, good; no stars, unsatisfactory. Meals are paid for by the Tribune.
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