I grew up in Salisbury, Maryland, where seasons weren’t a concept—they were a fact of life. We had four of them, and food followed the calendar whether you liked it or not. Strawberries were picked when they were ready. Vegetables came in bushels. You ate things at their peak, or you waited.
Back then, we didn’t chase ingredients.
We respected timing.
Chasing ingredients today usually puts you in a holding pattern. A recipe stalls while you wait for something rare to show up. Sometimes it never does. Sometimes the price climbs so high the dish no longer makes sense. And eventually, you have to ask the question most people avoid: Will anyone actually pay for this?
Respecting seasonality is different.
When an ingredient is in season, it’s already doing most of the work for you. The flavor is there. Often, it barely needs to be cooked. That’s where judgment matters. You don’t force technique onto something that’s already complete.
With modern techniques like drying, aging, and preservation, you can extend that flavor even further. You can take something great and push it into another dimension—but only if you understand what made it great in the first place.
Here’s the rule I live by:
If I can’t get an ingredient twice, I don’t worry about it.
Producers—then and now—will tell you how long something is expected to be in season. That information keeps you from going too far down a road that won’t support the dish long-term. If something works, you plan for it properly next year. If it doesn’t, you let it go.
That’s not fear.
That’s judgment.
Where this goes wrong today is when novelty gets mistaken for progress. Menus become stagnant without realizing it. Dishes appear once and disappear. Restaurants struggle to repeat success because the foundation was never stable to begin with.
The chefs who do this well don’t hunt.
They plan.
They have gardens.
They build relationships with farmers.
They understand timing, yield, and consistency.
Sometimes they’ll carry two or three versions of a dish—past, present, and future—so they can adapt as ingredients change without losing the identity of the plate. That’s how you keep customers engaged without lying to them.
Yes, we all chase flavor sometimes. The first ramps. The first asparagus. Morel mushrooms. That anticipation is part of cooking. But there’s a difference between chasing flavor and building food on fantasy.
That mindset also shapes how I know when to stop refining a dish and let it stand on its own.
Creativity can chase anything.
Judgment knows what will last.
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