Dig Inn spotlights fall produce with unexpected flavor twists

In Dylan Mendelsohn’s eyes, Dig Inn is a produce-driven restaurant company, and his mission is to provide chef-crafted meals that are nutritious, sustainable, and delicious. So when he was planning his first fall menu as culinary director for the 35-unit fast casual, he chose some of his seasonal favorites: delicata squash, Brussels sprouts, and beets.

“Still, I thought something was missing,” he said. “Fall just screams apples, and I wanted to celebrate that while also celebrating local farms.” A majority of Dig Inn’s locations are in New York and New England, and New York grows some of the best apples in the country. Mendelsohn was able to partner with local farmers to supply different apple varieties throughout the fall.

And so Hudson Valley Apples with Chai Yogurt, dried cranberries, walnuts, mint, celery, and cabbage is one of the eight new dishes Dig Inn introduced for fall. Here’s how the rest of the menu evolved.

Menu development process

Chef Mendelsohn is of the belief that he and his team should do the thinking for Dig Inn’s guests.

“We’re crafting these dishes so customers don’t have to worry if they are making a healthy, sustainable, or flavorful choice,” he said. “So there’s a lot of thoughtfulness I put into the menu, but I also like to introduce some whimsey.”

That thoughtfulness comes from Mendelsohn’s experience working in the kitchen of award-winning Eleven Madison Park as well as Boston-based Life Alive Organic Cafe, which he helped scale from five to 15 restaurants — both of which showed vegetables a lot of love. From a flavor point of view, his roots are Mediterranean, growing up with an Israeli mother who cooked Persian Food.

At Dig Inn, he puts vegetables front and center and gives them personality by introducing more flavor and more uniqueness, building flavor profiles through sauces and condiments.

Delicata Squash with Maple Tahini showcases all these influences. “We partnered with Soom Foods, a women-owned tahini supplier that sources sesame seeds from Ethiopia, which are the sweetest and have the best balance of fat,” said Mendelsohn. “They do all the difficult sourcing work for us.” The creamy, maple-enhanced tahini pairs well with the subtle, earthy flavor of delicata squash, and house-made superseed crunch (spiced toasted quinoa with pumpkin, sunflower, and sesame seeds) adds contrasting texture.

Delicata squash is prepared fresh daily at each location.

Another favorite fall vegetable, butternut squash, is the star of Autumn Farro with Butternut Squash. Here, Mendelsohn pairs the tahini with citrus to bring bright flavor to the dish, adding chopped fresh parsley and celery for colorful counterpoint.

In Brussels & Cabbage with Sweet Chili Crisp, another new item on the fall menu, Mendelsohn teamed up with Mr. Bing’s Chili Crisp. “They kind of knocked on our doors, and we just loved their product,” he said. He brought in the SKU to infuse the roasted Brussels sprouts with flavor and texture, but the chili crisp is cross-utilized on the restaurants’ wild salmon dish and customers can add it to any of the bowls.

Fall menu items

An ingredient that’s another first for the chain is black lentils, used as a base in Lentil & Chickpea Salad with Feta. “Climate change is really important to me, and lentils are actually a carbon sequesterer, pulling carbon out of the environment. Plus, they’re a perennial, so you don’t have to replant them every season,” Mendelsohn said. “This is one of those incredible planetary superfoods that I'm very excited to highlight on the menu in our lentil and chickpea dish because it has such a beautiful sustainability story.”

The aforementioned Hudson Valley Apples with Chai Yogurt rotates in different varieties of apples as they become available. For the chai yogurt marinade, Dig Inn creates its own chai spice blend and combines it with the yogurt, lemon juice, and a generous amount of black pepper. The fall menu is rounded out by three more dishes: Crunchy Roasted Red Beets paired with quinoa and superseed crunch; Yukon Mashed Potatoes with Garlic & Parm; and Just a Really Good Salad, a combo of Gotham Greens lettuce, lemon, olive oil, and herbs.

“We moved pretty quickly on this menu, and it worked out pretty well,” said Mendelsohn. “I always start with a ‘pie in the sky’ dream dish that I want to create, and then we have to whittle it down to make it work for our Dig Inn teams and reach an approachable price point.”

There were a few ingredient tweaks along the way, too. He first developed the delicata squash dish with fresh sage, but that didn’t go over well with the head of operations. “He took a bite and got a piece of sage, saying ‘what is that soapy flavor?’ And I realized that’s probably not going to work, as beautiful as it looked,” said Mendelsohn.

The chef also tried pomegranate seeds with this dish, but learned that they are only available in New York for about two months, so those had to be scrapped. With ingredients like pomegranate seeds and even sage leaves, there’s always the challenge of sourcing in enough volume to scale up chain-wide.

With produce the star of the show, Dig Inn’s fall menu is very vegetarian-friendly. But diners seeking more protein or more indulgence have plenty of choices too.

Menu flexibility and options

“I think some of the best ways you can come in here is if you just go after the vegetables,” said Mendelsohn. “We have a bowl on the menu called the Farmer's Favorite, which is just all of our favorite vegetables of the season. And if you want more sustenance, you can add a piece of salmon, steak, chicken, or tofu to it.”

Some guests come in and purchase a large side of fall veggies to supplement a bowl, while others sub delicata squash for their protein. “I like to say there are no rules on how you can eat here, and our guests find very creative ways to use our menu,” he added.

At Eleven Madison Park and Dovetail, another fine dining restaurant where Mendelsohn cooked, he said he learned how to deepen the flavor of a vegetable in its simplest form, and “really make it sing. We had this Japanese eggplant dish on the menu that was just so simple, but you had to bring a lot of details and technique to the preparation to get the flavor right,” he said.

Now he’s teaching Dig Inn’s teams how to cook in a much more thoughtful and deeper way; how to introduce flavor and technique that will coax the most out of each vegetable. That’s something Mendelsohn is paying forward from his time at Eleven Madison Park, he said. And every location of the fast casual has a chef in the kitchen to make sure that those teachings and execution are carried through.

Mendelsohn admits that there’s also strong demand for animal proteins, and he has a “sixth slot” on the menu that provides the opportunity to rotate in different and unique proteins. For winter, he’s thinking about meat. “We developed a braised beef that is really delicious, and one dream I have is to be able to do roasted duck or grilled leg of lamb,” he said.

Also in the works are more chicken and fish preps, including a braised chicken soup, and possibly grilled shrimp.

“And I have ramps on the back burner for spring,” Mendelsohn said. “We’re working hard with the grower to see if they can secure enough.”

He already has plans for the ramps, which usually grow wild. The culinary director wants to use them to create a thick green goddess-ranch dressing. “We want our guests to be able to have access to things that are very different, ingredients you may only be able to find at a white-tablecloth restaurant. Dig Inn is bringing it to you at a price point that's affordable.”

Pat plans and executes menu, food and drink stories for Restaurant Business and hosts the weekly Menu Talk podcast. She provides in-depth coverage of chefs, trends and menu innovation.