Thank God, it’s finally artichoke season! This happens fleetingly each March. Are you a lover of autumn, with its variegated foliage? Spring with its odoriferous aura of renewal? My favorite season is “artichoke,” and I’m observing its start among the young and gorgeous at the Lower East Side’s Le Dive, where fellow artichoke-lovers, at least a decade my junior, order them by the bushel. Le Dive’s chef Nicole Gajadhar can’t take them off her menu when they’re available. “I’ve tried,” she says. “People revolt.”
The poet Joseph Hutchison describes the magic of artichokes perfectly in his one-line poem: “O heart weighed down by so many wings.” Depending on how its wings are clipped, an artichoke can arrive in preparations ranging from crudely simple to haute. I’ve chosen Le Dive’s innocent, simply steamed version to inaugurate the season, and as I settle in amid the glossy scarlet bar tables, near a Jeremy Allen White look-alike in an inscrutable, wrinkled (well-cut) tuxedo—very chanmé—I put on my reading glasses so that I can see through the room’s eventide dark and properly consider my selection.
Who first ate artichokes? Where are they from? How do they manage to seem both rustic and refined? As: “Scale by scale / We strip off / The delicacy / And eat / The peaceful mush / Of its green heart,” I resolve to do some research. That, by the way, was Pablo Neruda from his poem “Ode to the Artichoke.” The “peaceful mush” part sounds better in the original Spanish. Poets love artichokes.
Artichokes are technically Cynara cardunculus var. scolymus—which, frankly, tells us nearly nothing. They’re unbloomed flower buds in the thistle family—all of whose members are edible, if prickly. Only the cardoon (Cynara cardunculus var. altilis) and the root of burdock are consumed as food by people who aren’t starving. (Cardoons look nearly identical to artichokes and also taste nearly identical—or at least only a little inferior. Italians love them, but they’ll eat anything.) Artichokes may or may not have culinary roots in ancient Greece and Rome. I write “may” because the references, from Theophrastus (371–287 BC) and Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79), might have meant not artichokes, but cardoons. Both plants are descended from the wild cardoon (Cynara cardunculus, for anyone keeping track), with one of the two having been domesticated, near Sicily, in the first century AD. According to police records, the famed Renaissance painter Caravaggio once attacked a waiter with a casserole and tried to stab him with a sword for not disclosing which of his artichokes were cooked in olive oil and which in butter.
Le Dive’s Gajadhar cooks hers in neither. I don’t even consider attacking my waitress. Her crop top and sangfroid make her too intimidating. And what she brings me, a chilled massive globe served whole with its leaves splayed open and Dijon aioli for dipping, is perfect—poached, stem up, in white wine, lemon juice, salt, “an ungodly number of herbs,” says Gajadhar, and water. It’s a classic bistro preparation—the poaching liquid inspired by artichokes à la barigoule, Provençal in origin. Gajadhar serves Le Dive’s nearly untrimmed: “I love watching people share it, navigating how to pick off the leaves,” she says. “It affects service too. The server interacts with you, explaining how to eat it, clearing the leaf bowl.”
Italy, where artichokes were domesticated, grows more than anywhere else in the world. (Egypt is a not-too-distant second.) One of the most alluring varieties is the romanesco—which any visitor to Rome’s famous market, the Campo de’ Fiori, has watched picturesque elders whittle down with a sort of ancient expertise and elegance. But just over the border in France, you can find the little purple Violets de Provence and the littler poivrades, as well as the Fiesole and the handbag-filling Lyon. Several years ago I bought a single two-kilo Lyon artichoke at the Biarritz market. It was the size of a small soccer ball. After ferrying it to and from a vacation house in the Dordogne in our rented Peugeot, I finally steamed it at an apartment in San Sebastián. It was the most delicious artichoke I’d eaten to date.
Speaking of dates, Catherine de’ Medici, wed at 14 in 1533, brought artichokes to France in her wedding trousseau, inspiring her adopted country’s adoption of artichokes. They migrated to the US with the French, who brought them to Louisiana, and the Spanish, who brought them to California. American artichokes—99.99 percent of them—are grown in California, where they’re the official state vegetable. Marilyn Monroe was the state’s very first Artichoke Queen.
There are six petite artichoke halves in the tart artichokes à la grecque I order at the bar of Le Veau d’Or, the recently refurbished Upper East Side bistro—and the oldest standing French restaurant in New York, once frequented by Hemingway, Marlene Dietrich, and Truman Capote. The rest of the dish is as glossy as the dining room’s walnut paneling: little pickled carrots cut into florets, button mushrooms with fluted caps, a single poached tomato, all delicately adorned with chervil. It’s a far cry from Gajadhar’s rowdy preparation at Le Dive, a perfect showcase of the vegetable’s versatility.
When I speak to Le Veau d’Or chef Lee Hanson, he reminisces about the whole artichoke vinaigrette he and his co-chef, Riad Nasr, used to make “back in the day at Pastis” (the chefs cooked together at the famed Meatpacking bistro). “Here, we wanted to be true to Le Veau d’Or’s original menus, which had always had mushrooms à la grecque or artichokes à la grecque.” But artichokes, Hanson says, are “a chef favorite.” What makes them a favorite? “Well, they’re a pain in the ass. Chefs gravitate to them because the home cook might think: I’m not dealing with that. But when you know the reward, it’s worth the hassle.”
Hanson removes all but the artichokes’ tender inner leaves and scoops out their fuzzy chokes. “We make a brine with lemon juice, lemon peels, garlic, fennel seed, coriander seed, toasted black peppercorns, white wine vinegar, water, and salt.” The artichokes are cooked in the brine, each in its own pot, until tender. (“Sometimes we’ve got six pots going.”) Hanson makes a vinaigrette from the cooking liquid, adding fresh lemon juice, olive oil, mint, shallots, herbs—a complicated preparation. But most of Le Veau’s menu is unabashedly rich. A meal of the sharp, pickled artichokes followed by a lamb gigot with coco beans, especially if accompanied, as mine is, by a 2022 La Soeur Cadette Bourgogne, would suit a teenage de’ Medici as well as a current-day food writer.
I leave Le Veau d’Or for my next artichoke. I’m trying to eat as many as I can, gathering my thistle buds while I may. My destination is the quarter mile of the West Village occupied by the restaurant dynasty of Rita Sodi and Jody Williams. The married chefs, one of whom is Italian, adore artichokes. “We love the ritual,” Williams tells me. “And the complexity of the artichoke—both flavor and preparation. It isn’t always obvious what to do with them; it’s something someone shows you.” As a young cook in Reggio Emilia and Rome, Williams says, she must have cleaned the equivalent of fields of artichokes. Now Sodi and Williams’s dominion includes Buvette, where one can order artichokes à la barigoule; I Sodi, where carciofi fritti appears on the menu; Bar Pisellino, where one can sip Cynar, the artichoke liqueur; and Via Carota, which has the distinction of offering the most artichokes in a single meal.
So, on the sun-dappled sidewalk of Grove Street, a friend and I begin our long Via Carota lunch with carciofi crudi—thinly sliced raw artichokes, amply dressed with lemon, smashed avocado, watercress, and Parmigiano—and carciofi alla griglia—artichokes poached in court bouillon, grilled, and then dressed in salmoriglio. (Just in case you, like me, have heard the rumor that artichokes are bad with wine, I recommend trying them with a Pugliese Petraluce before you believe it.) Next is a tortino di carciofi, a combination of olive-oil-fried artichoke slices and beaten egg, whipped together over high heat. It arrives, olive oil glistening over its top, snowcaps of Parmigiano slumping over a frothy nest of egg, wedges of tender artichoke suspended throughout. Tomorrow, there may be more artichokes yet at Via Carota. “The artichokes come and go,” Williams tells me. “Soon, we’ll switch to raw artichokes, oranges, mint, watercress, and Pecorino Romano. And we’ll add carciofi to the pinzimonio and bagna cauda.”
Having ordered a case from California, I now suffer an arresting case of anxiety of influence. Should I channel the louche denizens of Le Dive and serve mine poached and otherwise barely touched? Or attempt a complicated French rendition? I think back fondly on artichokes from my past: an artichoke pie and an artichoke stuffed with garlic and breadcrumbs, served on Christmas Eve by a Sicilian neighbor in Westchester, New York. I think of artichokes once served to me by Mona Talbott, proprietor of Talbott Arding in Hudson and founder of the Rome Sustainable Food Project. “I love artichokes and potatoes,” she tells me. “I trim the artichokes all the way down and stew them in white wine and olive oil, then combine them with potato wedges and add the cooking liquid for it to roast together.”
“Oh! Artichokes and beans,” I hear myself say out loud. I picture a heavy enamel casserole, like the one Caravaggio threw at the waiter. But in place of the potatoes—nubby swollen cranberry beans, which I managed to get fresh, then froze, over the summer. I’ll poach the artichokes whole, like Sodi and Williams do, and then combine beans and artichoke at the end, letting them roast briefly under a lacquer of fresh olive oil.
I follow my plan, inviting neighbors who profess to love artichokes as much as I do. The ingredients roast together long enough for me to open Champagne and set out chicories, warm baguette, and salted butter. We try the artichokes. I’m reminded of a line from The Princess Bride, when the irascible Peter Falk describes history’s famous kisses. “Since the invention of the kiss there have been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind.” It is true of my artichokes. They left them all behind.