• Michael Gebert
  • Bruce Sherman at North Pond

North Pond and Green City Market are a natural pairing. They have been since 1999 when Bruce Sherman first arrived at the restaurant, which overlooks the pond at the northern end of Lincoln Park, and the market, now the city’s highest-profile, was just a year old. Sherman’s been a member of the market’s board for years and a familiar presence, which makes him doubly influential over what you see at the farmer’s market: he’s a buyer and he helps select the farmers and products you’ll find there. With the arrival of spring foods (beginning with ramps, rhubarb, and asparagus) just around the corner, it seemed a good time to talk with Sherman about what he looks forward to cooking with personally and how getting your produce at the Green City Market has evolved over the years.

Tell me some of the first things that you were excited to have in the markets.

What about meats? How has the Green City Market changed the way the chefs who use it approach using meat?

MIdwest seafood is Great Lakes seafood or aquaculture; it’s great, it’s delicious. But for me, at the level of this restaurant, it’s hard because of the nature or lack thereof of the nobility of the product. I can do it more easily at brunch than dinner, whether it’s trout or whitefish. I still do it when I can, but it’s a little bit harder. When faced with a choice between whitefish and Alaskan halibut or John Dory or something . . . it’s pretty clear to me what I would be ordering.

But it’s important for people to understand that for me, as long as I’ve been here at North Pond, it’s always been seasonal first, local second. It’s great when they dovetail, but as a cook I’m much too interested in cooking with great products even if they don’t happen to be local.

However, there is that contingent of cooks and chefs who want to be able to use something simply for the curiosity value of using it. I’m from the old school; I’ll be like, why would you want to use that? But someone somewhere has cooked with anything and tried to make use of it, and there are places here that specialize in the wacky stuff. So yeah, people show up with stuff. It’s just whether it’s economically sustainable for that to keep growing it—