The Evening Star Cafe’s chef sources inspiration.

Chef Jonathan Till foraging in the woods.
The lights have dimmed a bit at The Evening Star Cafe since I first spoke with Jonathan Till, executive chef, in March. Like thousands of restaurants around the state and nation, The Evening Star has pivoted to offering a smaller pickup and delivery menu until it’s safe to reopen after the COVID-19 crisis. Our plans to meet up and forage for ramps and morels together were squelched, evolving into a series of emails and conversations. While not as intimate a setting, Jonathan’s passion for the outdoors and sourcing locally and seasonally came through loud and clear in our correspondence.

Chef Jonathan Till cleaning his latest batch.
While Jonathan Till grew up in family restaurants, the passion for local sourcing and foraging for this third-generation chef didn’t come until his time in culinary school. “I attended culinary school at New England Culinary Institute (NECI) in Montpelier, Vermont, from 2006 to 2008, partly because the school wasn’t in a big city and it afforded me the chance to hike, fish, and be outdoors in general,” Till says. “During my first year there, an instructor told the class that he would be going foraging after school if anyone was interested in learning. I was the only one that showed up. We picked common chanterelle mushrooms that day, and I was hooked.”
After graduation, serendipity struck again with a meeting that would cement his path forward. “I had a chance encounter with a friend of a friend who happened to be a trapper and forager,” Till says. “He took me under his wing and, for the next two years, taught me everything he knew and gave me a solid foundation for my foraging knowledge today.”
During that time, he also worked for the Beekman Street Bistro in Saratoga Springs, New York, which worked solely with local farmers and foragers to supply their menu. “What was on the pick-up truck that dropped off our daily produce was what we were putting on the menu that night,” says Till. “Where NECI had planted the seed of local, farm to table, and sustainable, Beekman Street Bistro would grow the roots that anchor my beliefs today.”
After stints in Nashville and in an itinerant role, Till landed in the D.C. area. He worked for several years at William Jeffrey’s Tavern in Arlington and staged with Jeremiah Langhorne at The Dabney, a Michelin star restaurant downtown. In 2018 he joined NRG (Neighborhood Restaurant Group) as the executive chef for its flagship restaurant, The Evening Star, which is in Alexandria’s Del Ray neighborhood.

Snapper with morel dumplings and ramp veloute.
During his time in D.C., Till has established relationships with a network of farmers and other purveyors to help inform his menus and has discovered a host of foraging spots to bring the bounty of the area to the dinner plates of his guests. He is committed to the vision of sustainability that he established early in his career.
The changes in season dictate the harvest cadence and the menus at The Evening Star. Different varieties of mushrooms are foraged almost all year long, and Till’s love of fungi is evident. During the summer chanterelle season, the mushroom graces the menu in multiple iterations, including chanterelles with lobster and pasta; rotisserie chicken with roasted chanterelles, thyme, and bing cherries; or just simply sautéed with butter and garlic, and eaten on warm homemade bread—bruschetta in one of its finest forms.
Foraged items are on the menu throughout the year. January and February yield wild greens and “weeds” like chickweed, miner lettuce, and garlic mustard. March and April bring forth pungent ramps, transformed into pesto or charred for coleslaw. Morels, dryad’s saddle, and chicken of the woods are other spring treats. May and June offer puffball and chanterelles, while the late summer months give forth cauliflower, black trumpet, yellow foot, and hedgehog mushrooms, as well as berries. Fall begins with the elusive maitake mushroom and acorns, which Till mills into flour to make pasta. Finally, cold-weather oyster mushrooms round out the year. Till is aspirational as well, when he says, “I wish I could train my dogs to find pecan truffles. Rumor has it they grow here, but every forager has a ‘rumor has it’ story.”

Corn chowder with Maryland crab in aleppo butter.
Naturally, there are rules for foraging. Typically it’s OK to forage in a national forest, Till says, while national parks and state parks are “a lot more tricky.” Shenandoah River State Park allows foraging for personal use only, but sometimes rules aren’t strictly enforced. “I personally have come out of the woods with several pounds of maitakes literally right in front of park police and they just waved to me,” Till says. “So there’s a black area, and a white area, and a whole lot of grey area. Trying to understand the foraging laws are complicated at best.” Till also uses an app called onX Hunt, which shows property lines and tax info, and helps contact landowners to get permission to forage. “I find people are more willing to let you on their land when a weapon isn’t involved, like in conventional hunting,” Till says. “You can even offer to take them with you; it’s their land after all.”
Till also works closely with a local nonprofit called the Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture. The group teaches veterans how to become sustainable farmers, and then takes their produce to inner cities and other places where a farmers’ market normally wouldn’t go, selling it “2 for 1” with programs like SNAP and WIC. The farmers also receive small start-up plots, or “incubator spaces,” that they use to grow produce to start their own farming businesses. “I buy everything I can from them,” says Till. “Their product is outstanding, and it’s for a good cause. I honestly can’t say enough good about this program and the people, vets, and farmers I’ve met through it.”
In addition to Arcadia, Till cultivates relationships with producers at local farmers’ markets and buys some goods they might not otherwise sell. “I see who will sell me seconds,” Till says. “I don’t need my produce to look good, I need it to taste good. Usually farmers always have something they want to get rid of … extra this, or these tomatoes are ugly. The farmer gets some money for a product they couldn’t otherwise make money on, and I get to feature their amazing product in a dish and tell the world about them through food. It’s a win-win! Many of my relationships with farmers have started with, ‘Show me the stuff that’s not on the tables.’ Some farmers tell me to go away, but most are happy to see chefs like me.”
Finally, if he can’t forage it or source it from local farms, Till grows it himself. He asked Monticello’s farm manager, Keith Nevison, to help plan a rooftop garden that’s an homage to the region; the vegetables are either indigenous to or bred for the Mid-Atlantic.
Till’s magic in the kitchen is combining the sustainable elements he sources to create dishes that “highlight and accent what the farmers are growing or what is in season only for a short time,” he says, “like a favorite yellow pomodoro with pink chanterelles (a mushroom I have only been able to find in Virginia) on fresh herb pappardelle and one paper-thin slice of apocalypse scorpion pepper from my garden.”
While many restaurants rely on a stable of dishes that appear on the menu year-round, regardless of the season, the beauty of The Evening Star stems from a menu dictated and curated by time and place, existing for just a moment, and all the more special for that reason.
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