Berry Good
Photography: Timothy Thimmes
Summer berries, bursting with juice, glistening like jewels and saturated with pure, natural flavor. Who can resist? Certainly not Stephanie Krizman, pastry chef at Park City’s Windy Ridge Bakery. “When we can get our hands on local berries, picked at the peak of ripeness, we move fast,” she says. “Summer berries are the most delicate, the most perishable, and the highest in sugar. I love that. They may not be picture perfect, but they’re so soft and fragrant, I can’t wait to make the most of them.” And that she does: in glorious tarts, pies and cobblers. She and her staff bake berries into coffee cakes and layer them in custard-rich trifles and Napoleons. They concoct intensely flavored berry sauces and marmalades. Krizman and her Windy Ridge team are also experts at swirling summer’s bounty into their housemade ice creams, sorbets and granitas. Look for their creations at the bakery itself and on menus at Chimayo, Ghidotti’s, Grappa, Wahso and Windy Ridge restaurants in Park City.
After a winter of unripe, green-shouldered strawberries from too far away (the kind that often disappoint on Valentine’s Day, even though they’re dipped in chocolate), the local/regional summer season begins with a few tentatively ripe strawberries that soon give way to increasingly lush specimens as the weather heats up. Then come plump raspberries, with blackberries hot on their trail. And in the best of all circumstances, fall brings a second flush of raspberries. Occasionally, tiny wild strawberries from Utah or wild huckleberries from Idaho and Oregon also find their way onto Park City-area menus from mid-summer through late fall. Whether chefs are lucky enough to find them at the Park City or Salt Lake City farmers markets or order them from their favorite purveyors, they share Krizman’s enthusiasm for the bounty of summer berries. Here’s what you can expect on some area menus this season:
Chef Chris Sheehan at Midway’s Blue Boar Inn serves a pan-seared duck breast finished with a sauce of blackberries, port, shallots and wine. He also likes to add summer berries to his frangipane (almond) tart or top fresh berries with a tart lemon zabaglione.
“The pop of both color and flavor” is what draws chef Greg Grass of Butcher’s Steak House to ripe berries—and his dessert menu is chock full them. Save room for Tres Leches Cake, his Mexican vanilla cake frosted with whipped cream and seasonal fresh berries, or a gooey berry buckle. Grass also runs an occasional special of Idaho elk with a huckleberry sauce.
At the Glitretind at Stein Eriksen Lodge, Chef Zane Holmquist favors a warm summer berry salad. Depending on what’s available, he tosses strawberries, blackberries, raspberries or blueberries with baby spinach and a light balsamic vinaigrette. Alongside, he adds a brilliant crostini of goat cheese and preserved lemon.
Chez Betty Chef Jerry Garcia uses raspberries or huckleberries in individual pies with a lemon meringue base topped with lemon curd, among other delights.
And … for something completely different, Chef Robert Valakia’s “Typhoon Roll” at Shabu incorporates unagi, tempura shrimp and cucumber, rolled inside-out in a roasted macadamia nut crust and topped with a spicy Bear Lake raspberry sauce. Believe it or not, it’s berry good.
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