Spring is in Session

The petunias are up on Pearson!

We are in the final, glorious stretch of spring.

You know this moment. The days are long, the evenings are warm enough to sit outside without a jacket, and everything feels unhurried. In Chicago, this particular window — late May into early June — is the city at its absolute best. The petunias are up, and we have some especially good news — we took out the enclosure on the terrace, so both patios are now fully open air. Th Gold Coast breeze is doing exactly what it should. It is also the moment when my kitchen starts to feel the pull of two seasons at once.

The strawberries are extraordinary right now and I am using them in everything — a burrata with strawberry mostarda, the Strawberry Crunch Salad that Lesa has been pairing brilliantly with the Sabroso Grenache, and a strawberry sundae that has been the most-ordered dessert on the menu for weeks. These dishes exist only as long as the strawberries are at their peak. That window is closing. Come in before it does.

At the same time, I can already feel summer arriving in the back of my mind. The stone fruits are coming. The tomatoes are almost there. I have been sketching out ideas in the kitchen that are going to make you very happy in July. But that is a story for the next issue of The A-List.

For now — the Garden Party Wine Flight is everything I want to drink in this in-between season. Four wines, each chosen for the mood of a warm evening outside. A Menetou-Salon from the Loire Valley that gives you all the elegance of Sancerre at a fraction of the price. The Sabroso Grenache — our official wine of spring, light and fresh and impossible not to love. A Monastrell from high-altitude Alicante that will surprise anyone who thinks they know what a Spanish red tastes like. And a Margaux — silky, floral, the kind of pour that turns dinner into an occasion. The flight is $38. It is one of my favorite things we have put together.

Jody Richardson has also been doing something brilliant at the bar. The Milk Punch Daiquiri is clarified, silky, and made for exactly this weather — warm enough to want something cold and interesting in your glass, cool enough that you are still sitting outside long after the sun goes down. Order one on the patio. You will not regret it.

And if you are celebrating something this season — a graduation, an anniversary, a milestone achievement — we are here for all of it.

Summer is around the corner. But spring still has a few perfect weeks left.

See you at the table. — Alpana