Trending In Chicago Restaurants: Cauliflower Steak

By Melissa Wiley in Food on Jan 2, 2013 8:40PM

We enjoy a good cauliflower steak as much as the next earthling, but we’re still a little puzzled as to its growing popularity. Or perhaps we’re simply belatedly taking notice of a low-profile culinary jewel that’s demonstrating surprising staying power in Chicago kitchens, from Ruxbin to Bin 36 to Davanti Enoteca. But the fact that the spicy walnut and Saba seasoned incarnation at Bar Toma is one of chef Tony Mantuano’s latest additions to the menu seems to support the trending theory.

This pale efflorescing vegetable appears to be blossoming anew in sliced steak form, giving vegetarians their faux meaty due when the big knives come out. Unlike their carnivorous namesakes, however, cauliflower steaks typically don't form a meal’s centerpiece. At Ruxbin, for example, the so-called steak serves as a vitamin C-rich side for the mushroom etouffee, while at Little Italy’s Davanti Enoteca the cruciferous vegetable makes for some hearty antipasti when served with garbanzo beans on a bed of olive tapenade. The roasted cauliflower steak at Bin 36 likewise presents diners with a chewy small plate perfect for passing round the table.

On the surface a pallid shadow of the flashier broccoli, cauliflower’s underwhelming flavor is precisely what renders it such ideal steak material. That’s assuming, of course, that you’re voluntarily forgoing the red fleshy stuff, which has its own charms. Cauliflower’s subtler appeal allows it to more readily absorb any flavors that take a cook’s fancy—truffle oil, kale pesto, tomato tapenade, you name it—without competing for your taste buds’ roving attention.