Jul. 1--CHAPEL HILL -- Cooking with local food is more than just what the Il Palio Ristorante does. It's what the restaurant's staff believes in, said chef Adam Rose. So they thought a cool contest to enter would be the Best Dish in North Carolina restaurant competition of the N.C. Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services.

Il Palio Ristorante at the Siena Hotel in Chapel Hill is one of 19 finalists in the Best Dish in North Carolina contest of the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Over the summer, each restaurant is showcasing its competing menu items for four weeks. An anonymous panel of judges visits each restaurant and dines on the competing dishes that feature North Carolina food products. Winners in casual and fine dining categories will be announced in August. Il Palio's competitors include Weathervane at A Southern Season in Chapel Hill and Four Square in Durham.

Rose created a full menu for the competition that features salad, soup, a starter, entree, dessert and wine or beer pairing with each course. Il Palio will feature its Best Dish offerings through July 17.

Everything is grown from the local earth, and the ingredients work well and taste better together, Rose said.

The menu is: summer bean and Goat Lady "Old Liberty" salad; five onion and Ayrshire Farm rosemary soup; Pope Farms lam and Elodie Farms chevre stuffed ravioli, asparagus tips and morels; roasted Cane Creek pork loin involtini, cheese, spinach, red and green cabbage, bacon and apple cider balsamic reduction; and mixed summer berries raspberry crisp, blackberry caviar and strawberry gelato.

Using a majority of local food means making more connections.

"At different times of the year, I can get most things I want. Sometimes we'll go to other sources. The core of our menu is local," said Rose. "It's definitely a challenge, calling three or four farmers and going to different farmers' markets each week." For a long time, he was the only one at Il Palio making those connections, but now executive sous chef Isaiah Allen does, too. Allen has also been directly involved with the Best Dish contest menu.

"Farmers get to meet chefs and it all comes together on the plate," Rose said.

Supporting the local farming community is less self-serving, he said. "It serves a greater cause, and I believe a healthier cause -- not having my onion spending two weeks on a truck from Mexico."

Rose said what he does is finish the food. The farmers are the ones who get it started, he said.

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