A Perfect Pairing

Chef Jeremy Pacheco adores fennel with the passion of a teenager in love. As chef at Lon’s at the Hermosa, he weaves this floral-smelling vegetable into dishes whenever possible.

His fennel love is so well-known that his friends identify him as “fennelman” on their cellphone directories. And like the American official in Italy who wrote in 1824 to Thomas Jefferson that “fennel is beyond every other vegetable, delicious,” Pacheco sees only perfection in this licorice-flavored pale-green bulb.

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