Three-way

Strawberries cascade down grocery conveyor belts all year long, but for chefs who pay attention to season there’s only a short window in which to capitalize on the sweet-tart flavor. “They’re here and then they’re gone,” laments Copperblue chef Michael Tsonton. While he can get his hands on them he turns the berries into a savory clafoutis (a cakelike concoction usually served as dessert) and pairs it with a vegetable ragout and pink-peppercorn butter. It’s only offered for two weeks, though. After that, he says, strawberries are “just a bunch of flavorless knobs from California.” (Lake Point Tower, 580 E Illinois St, 312-527-1200).

It took Rohini Dey and her team at Vermilion three or four rounds of cocktail shaking to get the drink Strawberries, No Cream right. “It’s the antithesis of strawberries and cream,” Dey explains. That’s because the cocktail—which uses vodka as its base—pits the strawberries against sharp, acidic balsamic vinegar. The resulting combination sits somewhere between sweet and dry, but is so refreshing that it’s served as an aperitif. “It sounds odd, but it comes together quite nicely,” Dey says. “It’s as left field as the rest of [what we do].” (10 W Hubbard St between State and Dearborn Sts, 312-527-4060).

Café Matou chef Charlie Socher’s strawberry epiphany happened when he found himself eating the berries for dessert while polishing off a glass of pinot noir. To his surprise, the two worked well together—so well, in fact, that he re-creates the flavor in his soupe au fraises, a strawberry soup spiked with Burgundy and topped with a housemade buttermilk sorbet. To Socher, the dish is as much about color as it is about the flavor. When you get wild, seasonal strawberries, he says, “you bite into them and they’re not white inside. They’re red inside. And that makes a big, big difference.” (1846 N Milwaukee Ave between Bloomingdale Ave and Moffat St, 773-384-8911).