Fall gathering time has been stoking our palates since Neolithic days, and we still haven’t tasted the half of it. From bird to bacon, citrus to cider, and shellfish on a whole other scale, this artisanal lineup of seasonal fall foods takes harvest season to infinity and beyond.
Lobster
Where to get it: Luke’s New Shell Lobster
When most people think of the best season to be eating lobster, summer springs to mind. According to Ben McKinney of Luke’s Lobster based in Portland, ME, “Fall is when landings and taste hit a perfect balance.”
While the company ships frozen lobster year-round all over the country, early fall is when you should be logging on for the new shells. Starting in September, the crustaceans begin molting into the next stage of their lives. The delicate exoskeletons “mean that the meat is almost marinated by the cold Atlantic Ocean,” adds McKinney. “So this is arguably the best tasting lobster of the entire year.”
Most of the yuzu you get in the U.S. comes from California. But the very best of this hauntingly floral citrus favored in Japanese cuisine is grown just outside of Trenton, NJ. Here, in a container orchard that moves between an outdoor field and a greenhouse powered by landfill emissions, Wall Street financiers turned farmers Vivek and Seema Malik raise dozens of uncommon citrus varieties—from finger limes, sudachi and calamansi to at least a half-dozen kinds of kumquats.
The undisputed queen of the harvest here is their baseball-sized, yellow-green yuzu. Loosely described as a mash-up of more common cousins like lemon, grapefruit and mandarin, yuzu is the citrus outlier that launched Bhumi. The couple first tasted it at Nobu in New York, inspiring them to grow some themselves. In the fall at their Jersey grove, Bhumi’s original yuzu trees still bear bountiful stock of their star player.