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restaurant and bar—so we’re keeping
that open for a while during Pavilion
concerts. When the CSO or other
classical artists are playing, the Lawn
Bar will be open through intermission,
and for non-classical concerts it’ll be
open until about an hour before the
show ends. Tree Top and Lawn Bar are
closed for Martin eatre concerts, and
the whole building is closed if there’s
only a Bennett Gordon Hall concert.
What are some of the new bites we can
get in the Dining Pavilion?
Ravinia regulars will notice that the
Market has a few new counters. One
is a real smokehouse, so I’m calling it
Smokehouse
, a er the year Ravinia
opened. It’ll be Texas barbecue with
smoked meats and side dishes. We
also have a new station devoted to hot
paninis and fresh sides and deli salads,
so it’ll be a go-to place to ll out your
picnic. You can choose from to
side dish o erings as well as get fresh
pressed sandwiches. e taco and pizza
stations will still be there, with some
new avors. But you won’t want to
miss our new signature burger at the
grill—the
, named for Ravinia’s area
code—it’s . ounces of ground chuck,
and it has barbecue brisket with melted
cheddar and fried pickles. It’s like
ounces of meat. e Market will have
some new grab-and-go too, like upscale
cheese boards from Great American
Cheese Collection in Chicago. We’ll also
have ights—white and red wine and
two di erent beers, so four di erent
ights of cheese to match the drinks.
It’ll come with dried fruits, nuts, and
crackers. Upstairs, the Park View’s space
hasn’t changed as much as its menu,
but it does have a new heated awning
outside. In Tree Top, the “chef ’s tables”
will continue to feature global cuisine,
but the menu evolves all the time,
following the micro-seasonal idea. It’s
per person and you can partake of
whichever dishes appeal to you as many
times as you want.
Can you tell us more about this
“micro-seasonal” concept?
at’s a new thing. Overall, the cooking is
what I’m also calling “seasonal summer,”
and we’re boiling it down into micro-
seasons. We open June , so right then
you’ll see a lot of asparagus, English
peas, ddlehead ferns, all those green
vegetables we love from spring. But
when they’re gone locally, they’re gone.
When the crop is over, we’re moving
on. We’ll buy a lot of things from local
farms. When tomatoes are everywhere in
August, you’ll see a lot of tomatoes. Same
with sweet corn, baby beets, and more.
Will any of the new food concepts be
available around the park or just in the
Dining Pavilion?
Outside of ice cream, co ee, and drinks,
everything is in the Dining Pavilion. But
we’ll be serving ice cream from multiple
carts around the park this year; we won’t
be using the Carousel anymore. It just
wasn’t practical to keep serving the lines
from a round building.
What about the cocktail and wine
programs, who is overseeing those?
Daniel Freedman, the assistant
director of the restaurants, is a certi ed
sommelier. We’ve got new cocktails and
wines going in, and we are bringing in a
lot of cra beer on dra this season too.
ere’s going to be a bigger presence of
popular beers.
RAVINIA MAGAZINE | JUNE 1 – JUNE 17, 2018
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