Elawa Farm, a historic former country escape built by a couple with a meatpacking fortune, has evolved into a foundation with an ethereal cafe, elegant market and earnest mission.
And, as is sometimes the case, I’m not sure that the people who’ve worked so hard to create the space can see how special it’s become.
The Cafe at Elawa Farm opened last October in Lake Forest, the fabled North Shore suburb 30 miles or so from Chicago.
It is, in fact, a cozy place for breakfast or lunch with delicious pastries and coffee in an extremely lovely setting. With an idyllic patio, I might add, overlooking the adorable goats in their paddock. Meanwhile, the market could be an aesthetic set for any Nancy Meyers film.
But dining at the farm, all of which Elawa Farm Foundation executive chef Lee Kuebler oversees with his kitchen team, also features a series of events, from buffet burger nights to seated grill nights, to spectacular private birthdays to weddings to celebrations of life, which give the once quiet fields open to the public a surprising festival atmosphere.
“You’re not the only one who’s surprised,” said Kuebler. He was previously at Ada Street and Mexique, and owned three restaurants of his own in neighboring Libertyville, including Milwalky Trace. “We had projections and ideas of what we thought the cafe would be like, and it’s smashing all of our conceptions of what we thought it was going to do.”
A chicken salad sandwich, however, has been an unexpected constant.
“When I started here, I was kind of told, ‘Listen, the chicken salad has to stay,’” said the chef. “I’ve modified it a little bit, for lots of different reasons, but not much.”
He’s actually modified it quite a bit. His hearty chicken salad sandwich now starts with toasted slices from a Publican Quality Bread “1979” multigrain hearth loaf, then hand-pulled chicken barely held with house-made mayonnaise, tarragon, celery and golden raisins. They pull tender chunks, both white meat and dark, from whole rotisserie chickens.
“That was such a point of contention for a while,” said Kuebler. “We had so many people who were like, ‘Oh, we just want white meat chicken salad.’ And I’m like, ‘No.’ And I think a lot of people have kind of turned themselves around on that.”
The chicken carcasses become bone broth sold chilled by the quart alongside extra pints of chicken salad at the market.“Chicken is like the engine of the cafe and market situation,” said the chef.
That sandwich, by the way, comes with your choice of three sides, but you should get the seasonal pasta salad, which is also ridiculously overachieving.
They make the pasta in-house with Janie’s Mills organic semolina flour from downstate Illinois, and a coveted Emiliomiti extruder.
The pasta shape also changes.
“My favorite pasta shape that we use a lot is the creste di gallo, which is Italian for cockscombs,” said Kuebler. “It’s basically like a thick macaroni noodle with a ridged kind of wavy cockscomb on top.”
You’ll find pints of that impeccably al dente pasta salad, along with fresh pasta at the market too.
The Elawa burger, perfectly pink inside, with a side of beef fat fries, seems somewhat poetic at the farm named for Elsa Armour and her husband, A. Watson Armour of the meatpacking family.
A gloriously griddled half-pound beef patty comes smothered with smoked Gouda cheese, sweet onion jam and silky herb aioli on a sesame seed bun. It could use a pickle or pickled onions for contrast and crunch.
The chef chose a thick patty, which is available “not pink” too, over thin double patties for a few reasons.
“We’re working with a pretty small kitchen, because we’re in this historic building,” he said. “And I just prefer burgers like that.”
They’re using local, pasture-raised ground beef and are hand-pressing the patties, so he believes thick burgers highlight the texture and flavor best.
Most of their ground beef comes from Kilgus Farmstead, said Kuebler. They also work with two local farm aggregators, Down at the Farms outside Fairbury and Tulip Tree Gardens Farm in Beecher.
You can also choose your side with the burger, but you should really get the golden, fresh-cut, beef-fat fried fries.
“We’re using beef tallow, and it depends on where we can get it,” said Kuebler. Finding rendered beef fat locally isn’t always the easiest. “We use Whittingham as one of our purveyors, and they have a program where they source their meat from within 200 miles of Chicago.”
A vegetarian mushroom ragu pasta featured house-made ribbons of mafaldine pasta tossed with a fairyland harvest of velvety lion’s mane, pioppino and chestnut mushrooms from Golden Gills in Wauconda, sautéed in garlic thyme butter.
The brothy beans bowl infused earthy gems from Meadowlark Farm in Wisconsin with smoky bacon, brightened by fennel top pesto and served with crusty bread.
My farm breakfast was an artist’s palette of sunny eggs, stout sausage, sourdough PQB toast, exquisite hash-brown potato cakes, house-made jam and house-churned butter.
“We have one person, one of our part-time cooks, her name is Lindsey Shifley, she churns the butter every week,” said the chef. “She also cultures the buttermilk that’s left over for our pastry team to use in pastries.”
Those buttery pastries, by pastry chef Maggie Logan, can be some of the most maddeningly elusive items at the cafe and market.
From a burnished apricot cake to studded triple chocolate chip cookies to the newest zucchini cornbread, they sell out fast. And a gluten-free chocolate chip bar and gluten-free blueberry lemon doughnut, sell out even faster.
A recent chicken pot pie at the market, normally available during the winter holidays, is decidedly not gluten-free, but the delicate sauce within was made with gluten sensitivity in mind.
“I can’t eat wheat anymore,” said Kuebler. “I love velouté and French mother sauces, but it always kills me to take beautiful chicken stock and throw pounds of flour into it. So I just do it in what feels like a much more natural way to me.”
His chicken pot pie, which the chef explains he makes more in the style of chicken and dumplings, rivals any around town in overall deliciousness, but the sauce could have been thickened by reduction instead.
A classic mimosa cocktail may be poured just a touch too strong, and instead of orange juice, I would have liked a variation based on their stunning daily changing agua fresca. I keep hoping the radiant cucumber returns.
The Bourbon vanilla latte, however, served hot or iced, in a ceramic cup if so desired, gracefully balances the espresso and syrup from Tala Coffee Roasters in Libertyville.
The staff at Elawa has been so impressive at every level, from servers at the cafe to market manager Susan Petersen.
“Behind the scenes, it doesn’t always feel as great and smooth,” said Kuebler, laughing. “And we run a really great workforce development program with Center for Enriched Living.”
The nonprofit organization based in Riverwoods enriches the lives of individuals with developmental disabilities by maximizing their opportunities, which can include employment.
Some members work for the farm team, he added, and two of their employees work in the cafe as food runners and bussers.
Could Elawa Farm become the Blue Hill at Stone Barns of the Midwest? (Without the controversy that the former Rockefeller dairy farm in New York has denied.) Perhaps someday. But what they’ve planted and carefully tended has already beautifully borne a bounty that’s more accessible to our greater community.
“This is one of the first places and first times in my career where I feel like I’m kind of contributing my skills and talents to something bigger than myself,” said the chef. “And it’s always at the forefront of my mind.”
Elawa Farm
1401 Middlefork Drive, Lake Forest
847-234-1966
Open: Cafe, Wednesday to Sunday 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.; Garden Market, Friday and Saturday until Oct. 25, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.; Sunday 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Prices: $14 (chicken salad sandwich with pasta salad or choice of side), $20 (mushroom ragu pasta), $21 (Elawa burger with beef fat fries or choice of side), $14 (farm breakfast), $6 (Bourbon vanilla latte), $5 (agua fresca)
Sound: OK (65 to 70 dB)
Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible with restrooms on same level
Tribune rating: Excellent, 3 of 4 stars
Ratings key: Four stars, outstanding; three stars, excellent; two stars, very good; one star, good; no stars, unsatisfactory. Meals are paid for by the Tribune.
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