The Return of Rhubarb

southern Restaurants Celebrating THE sEASON’s Most Tart Ingredient

Spring and summer brings a host of fleeting seasonal vegetables: ramps and asparagus, tender peas, sugar snaps and early alliums. But rhubarb might be the most versatile of the early arrivals.

While hothouse rhubarb can be grown all year, it sometimes lacks the zingy punch and brightest red hue of the field-grown variety, which reaches its peak from April to June.

Here are just a few of our restaurants across the South and beyond putting rhubarb center stage right now...

Pizza Grace – Birmingham, Alabama

Menu item: Rhubarb Tart

Ingredients: Rhubarb jam, pastry cream, almond sucrée, poached rhubarb, lemon balm.

Rhubarb might be an unexpected ingredient at an acclaimed pizza joint, but locals know to trust Pizza Grace Chefs Geri-Martha and Ryan O’Hara to create something exceptional with the ingredients delivered to their Morris Avenue restaurant. Here, the rhubarb is incorporated into a dessert worth saving room for. 

“I fell in love with rhubarb when I first worked with it at Jean-Georges in New York City," says Geri-Martha. Every year it reminds me of my time there and all that I learned under Johnny Iuzzini. I helped create a strawberry-rhubarb cobbler for their spring menu. I’ll never forget Jean-Georges tasting a bite and exclaiming ‘très excellent!'"

And locals know to not sleep on the rhubarb ice cream at the O’Hara’s three Big Spoon Creamery locations. Adds Ryan: "It is a vanilla bean ice cream with the same strawberry rhubarb cobbler filling I did at Jean-Georges and cobbler topping mixed in.”

Luminosa: Asheville, North Carolina

Menu item: Rhubarb Nonalcoholic Cocktail

Ingredients: McConnell Farms rhubarb, Seedlip Spice, Giffard Nonalcoholic Aperitif, Fever-Tree tonic, orange wedge.

For Sarah Charles, Director of Food & Beverage at Luminosa, rhubarb is practically emotional.

“Rhubarb feels like the first true sign of spring,” Charles says. “After the long doldrums of winter, it’s one of the first ingredients that really signals the changing of the seasons.”

At Luminosa, rhubarb has become tied to the restaurant’s own story. Charles recalls it being one of the first truly seasonal ingredients the team experimented with after opening.

“It’s delicate and a little tricky to work with, which made it especially rewarding to find ways to highlight its bright, herbaceous, spirited character with the care it deserves,” she says. “Every year it returns, it feels like a reminder that we’ve made another trip around the sun together.”

Perso: Louisville, Kentucky

Menu item: Duck Confit

Ingredients: Creamed leek and potato, rhubarb vinaigrette.

At Perso, Chef de Cuisine Drake Alrich says rhubarb represents far more than a seasonal produce item.

“I love rhubarb season for the crisp, clean, tart flavors it brings and the way it signals the arrival of my favorite growing seasons — spring and summer,” Alrich says. “I’m especially drawn to rhubarb’s versatility and how beautifully it can be used in both sweet and savory applications.”

That versatility inspired a dish pairing bright rhubarb vinaigrette with rich duck confit — allowing the acidity and freshness of the ingredient to balance the dish’s deeper, more unctuous flavors.

The Wine Kitchen: Leesburg, Virginia

Menu item: Strawberry Rhubarb Semifreddo

Ingredients: Shortcake white chocolate crumb, strawberry rhubarb gel, macerated strawberries.

At The Wine Kitchen, Executive Chef John Cummings ties rhubarb directly to childhood nostalgia.

“I love rhubarb season because of the combination of strawberries and rhubarb,” Cummings says. “Strawberry-rhubarb pie was always one of my favorites growing up.”

Those memories inspired a lighter, Italian-influenced tasting menu dessert designed to capture the essence of strawberry-rhubarb pie without the heaviness of a traditional pastry. “I was always a fan of any special dessert as a kid,” he says. “But the few times we had strawberry-rhubarb pie or cobbler, I remember being especially excited.”

Audrey: Nashville, Tennessee

Menu item: Honey Meringue

Ingredients: Rhubarb & Swiss chard jam, chamomile-infused Chantilly cream, freeze-dried lemon curd and a honey meringue 

The word ‘seasonal’ is practically synonymous with Chef Sam Jett’s approach to the menus at Audrey in Nashville, Tennessee. Farm-raised rhubarb is a rarity in these climes so Jett was thrilled when Cooper Creek Farm brought him a fresh batch recently. He knew just who to share it with: his pastry chef Gracie Fredericksen. Hailing from Wisconsin, where rhubarb thrives, it is nostalgic to her. She transformed that first harvest into a jam, aiming to make it last as long as possible.

Says Jett: “Rhubarb historically does not grow well in middle Tennessee due to mild winters and hot-humid summers. This is the first rhubarb I’ve seen in a decade, grown locally. We gave it all to our pastry chef, Gracie, as it is dear to her heart.”

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About the author

Curious, adventurous and free to move about the cabin, Christiana Roussel is a Birmingham-based podcaster, editor and award-winning food, travel, and lifestyle writer. Her writing work has appeared nationally in Palomino County, Garden & Gun, Covey Rise, Good Grit, Shooting Sportsman, The Local Palate, Veranda, Flower Magazine as well as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Birmingham Home & Garden and other regional publications. She is the host of the ”Red Fox on the Run” podcast. Christiana is also a proud member of the Birmingham chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier as well as the Industry Advisory Board of Auburn University’s Horst Schulze School of Hospitality Management.