This past weekend felt like the official start of the city’s finest eating season, especially at 8 a.m. on Saturday as I rolled up to the brand new Brick Works Farmers’ Market off Bayview Avenue, only to find it jammed with early morning hunter-gatherers. The market operates according to a radical new idea (or one that, with a few exceptions, is new to this city): that the vendors at farmers’ markets should actually be farmers. So rather than finding the stalls crammed with produce fresh from Chile and South America, with a little Ontario here and there, I came across David Haman, the young city cook (he was co-chef with Nathan Isberg in the early days of Czehoski) who’s been staging at Cookstown Greens. Haman was hawking ivory-hued French breakfast radishes he’d just pulled, as well as green and white asparagus, Cookstown’s incomparable 35-variety mixed greens and feathery dill so fragrant it could drive even the clumsiest, most know-nothing of kitchen hands to reach for the pickling pot.

The people from St. John’s Bakery had set out a long table piled high with their excellent loaves and were doing brisk business. At the stall next door, Andrew Akiwenzie, owner of Wiarton’s Akiwenzie’s Fish and More, had a cooler full of Georgian Bay whitefish he’d caught just the day before. Montforte Dairy had set up a table as well, wisely hedging their bets on the upstart affair (they’ve also got a popular presence at the suddenly outclassed Saturday morning St. Lawrence “Farmers’” Market). And a few stalls over, a couple of young guys—almost kids, really—had opened a strawberry stand, with the first I’d seen of Ontario’s sweetest summer crop. It’s still early in the season, so the berries weren’t at what I’d call peak ripeness, but they were red all the way through (as opposed to red skinned and white gutted), with a delicious strawberry smell. I asked the guys where they grew them, and they told me Markham. Which surprised me, I’ll admit—I’m still relatively new to the city, so I’ve never known Markham as a farming town. I’d always thought the city’s name was an old Six Nations word meaning “Land of Many Strip Malls.”

The season is finding its way onto better menus. Recently, at chef Stephen Treadwell’s eponymous place in Port Dalhousie, I had a clump of spinach—roots and all—that had been dug a few hours earlier, and delivered to his kitchen door, he said, by one of the local farmers who often turn up, produce basket in hand. At The Bloomfield Carriage House, in Prince Edward County, I had an exquisite plate of gnocchi—almost an afterthought, actually, accompaniment to a knockout roast leg of caribou—made with nettles. I’ve always seen cooking the plants as a just reward for their stinging disposition (I had a run-in with a patch on a mountain biking excursion through the Don Valley the other day). To me, their intense, green, slightly bitter, subtly grassy flavour tastes like the distillation of spring itself.

Michael Caballo, the often unsung chef at the Niagara Street Café, has been making a smart, exotic-tasting compote of rhubarb, wild ginger, vanilla beans and star anise that’s a gorgeous match to either foie gras or ice cream—and just about everything in between (we’ll feature his recipe in an upcoming issue).

And, of course, Ontario asparagus seems to be everywhere—a blessing, yes—and I order it faithfully for the first few weeks of June, savouring it as the definitive taste of spring. I’ve got about a week left, I’d wager, to gorge on the stuff. And then I’ll resolve, as I do every year around this time, never to see one of those stalks again.

Who isn’t doing fresh and local these days? I’ve had a certain fondness for the pizza at Il Fornello since I first tried it in a moment of weakness about a year ago. Granted, it’s a big chain restaurant, the service can be brutal (though it can also be pretty good), and I often get the sense when I’m there that I should be holding a little video camera, observing loudly, insistently, from under an ill-fitting fisherman’s hat that the CNN Tower doesn’t have anything on the Empire State Building. But the pizza? Pretty great. And now this, from a press release that landed here on Monday: the chain’s menu will feature “chilled sweet potato soup with fresh herb–infused yogurt; grilled beef rib-eye with baco noir jus; crêpes stuffed with smoked trout, arugula and chèvre; grilled lamb rib with sweet ’n’ sour apricot chutney; and strawberry shortcake.” All, it appears, from right here in Ontario. Sign me up—just as soon as I find the right hat.