"This is me on a plate": How one dish shows what a new Wisconsin restaurant is about

Marlee Crave served a summer dish at Fiddlehead Kitchen made from her husband's tomatoes and greens, her homemade sourdough bread and her family's cheese."Here you go, this is me on a plate," she said.Crave and Sarah Mittelstadt call plates like that their "heart dishes." The two women opened Fiddlehead Kitchen at the end of August in downtown St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin, just across the border from Minnesota, with a menu built around local farms.Local growers supply everything from beef and lamb to mushrooms, honey, cheese and vegetables. Crave and her husband established a vegetable farm in 2020, and it grows most of the vegetables the restaurant uses.The menu changes with the seasons. Crave said that once something is no longer available from her farmers, it comes off the menu. That's why the burger has no tomato right now, she said. The tomatoes "just died."Surprises from farmers shape the menu, too. When a farmer shows up with a "bumper crop of parsnips," Mittelstadt said, that bec