Green City Market

On June 24th I traveled into Chicago to experience the Green City Farmers Market, which is held in Lincoln Park on Wednesday and Thursday mornings through October. The market is a 501(c)(3) non-for profit organization and Chicago’s only sustainable Green Market.

So on a warm day full of sunshine I made my way through more than 60 local sustainable vendors. That morning Chef Rick Bayless, owner of Frontera Grill and Topolobambo restaurants, was providing a chef demonstration and talking how Green City Market began and why sustainable local food is so vital to our being. The following is an excerpt from Chef Bayless’ presentation.

“I’ve been a part of this market since its inception and it really makes me thrilled. We started this market 11 years ago in the alley of the Chicago Theater. We had 7 vendors that came out. We had to coax them because they thought nobody would want to come to an independent farmers market that really put sustainability first and foremost. We go 150-200 people to come out to those vendors, and it kind of limped along for a couple of years and then we moved to Lincoln Park. Now after 10 years we have over 4,000 people and 60 vendors. That says something about Chicago’s hunger for really great food.

Supporting local agriculture is really what I tried to do in the 23 years now that we’re going on in the history of Frontera Grill…is to put together a group of farmers that could produce and provide for our restaurant the kinds of things that make food interesting and different. When you drink a bottle of well crafted wine what you are tasting is the taste of the place.

When I moved to Chicago 30 years ago. I would eat in some of the restaurants around here. People would ask me what I thought of the flavor of Chicago is. Back in the rea if you where a chef that was worth your salt you would buy stuff from as far as way as possible. Your entire menu was put together with the names of other countries that you had procured the ingredients from. We have come 180 degrees from that now and to be a chef worth your salt in Chicago is to offer a taste of Chicago – the real taste of Chicago. the taste of what local producers are doing for us to put on the plate. And suddenly we’re developing, I think, now is the history of Chicago food – a sense of what it means to m=be a chef in Chicago – working to create dishes that we put in front of our guests with the flavors that are unique to here. When people travel from far away to Chicago to go on their eating expeditions, which so many people do, that they taste things that they know they can taste nowhere else….

When I was in the Yucatan I was eating a flavor that I couldn’t carry anywhere else. It was the unique flavor of that place. We are really striving, I think, to develop that kind of sense of flavor in Chicago.”

Chef Bayless then demonstrated a wonderful dish that used goat, procured from Mint Creek Farms located in Stelle, Illinois. The attending crowd was easily won over with this delicious tasting meat – somewhere between pork and lamb. The recipe for Slow-Steamed Goat with Mild Chile Seasoning (Birria de Chivo o de Carnero) is located on the Green City Market website. There were a lot of “wows” as everyone tasted the goat.

Just another note Chef Bayless is on Top Chef Masters on the Bravo channel this summer. He won the first round cooking what he knows best – regional cuisine from Mexico.

For more information about Green City Market, go to chicagogreencitymarket.org

To learn more about Rick Bayless and Frontera Grill, go to fronterakitchens.com