Dump’wings

The volatility of chicken wing prices is a constant challenge for restaurants, particularly those that depend on the bird appendages for the bulk of their sales, such as Wing it On!, which is offering this alternative of fried dumplings stuffed with either chicken or vegetables (mostly cabbage, carrots, bean sprouts, sweet potato, onion and scallion, as well as tofu) and served with a choice of the same sauces or rubs that guests could choose for wings, along with blue cheese or buttermilk ranch dressing.

Caviar Frites

The high-low trend is on display prominently at The Rusty Pelican in Key Biscayne, Fla., where this new menu item developed by Jim Pasto, Eastern Regional Chef for Specialty Restaurants Corporation, who makes fries out of Yukon gold potatoes and tosses them in ranch dressing powder. He plates them and squirts vodka crème fraîche on top, made by combining two parts crème fraîche to one part sour cream, adding a splash of vodka and seasoning it with cayenne pepper, lemon zest and salt. He puts bowfin caviar around the sides of the fries and salmon roe on top, and serves it with a side of ranch dressing for $23

Burrata Chicken Parm

Shake Shack is currently testing this menu item (through July 2 or while supplies last) at its West Village location in New York City. It’s battered and fried chicken breast topped with burrata cheese, pepperoni-pancetta vodka sauce made with Bianco DiNapoli tomatoes, and basil, all on a toasted potato bun for $9.79. No plans are underway to expand the test yet, but you never know.

Blue Crab Rangoon

Using local products in menu items is a great way to add perceived value to them, which is what chef Michael Correll is doing at Ruse in St. Michaels, Md., where he uses ramps and Chesapeake Bay blue crab for this otherwise pretty traditional Chinese-American dish. He combines ricotta cheese and cream cheese with fresh ramp tops and pickled ramp bottoms along with lump blue crab meat and fish sauce and wraps the mixture in wonton skins.

He makes a sweet-and-sour sauce with orange juice, sugar, red wine vinegar, garlic, ginger, jalapeño pepper, Szechuan peppercorn, coriander seed, cilantro, lime juice, dark soy sauce, fish sauce, water and cornstarch finished with Calabrian chile paste. Then he fries the wontons and serves them with the sauce.

“Carrot”

At Jungsik, a fine-dining Korean restaurant in New York City, executive pastry chef Yoonjung Oh makes a dessert that looks like a recently harvested carrot. She combines carrot cake with cream cheese mousse and pecan praline, shapes that to look like a carrot and encases it in white chocolate. Then she paints it with a combination of white chocolate, dark chocolate, cocoa powder, and black cocoa powder to resemble an actual carrot. She garnishes it with carrot tops and serves it in a planter that’s filled with carrot cake meant to resemble dirt. Guests are then invited to remove one of the “carrots” from the dirt and place it on their plate with black tea ice cream over more crumbled carrot cake.