It sounds easy enough for an experienced chef: design a three-course meal that showcases the pawpaw fruit.

But Shelli Bosgoed, the executive chef at Marshview Patio in Norfolk County, was working under a few constraints.

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For one, pawpaw are hard to find, especially after the hot, dry summer southern Ontario sweated through this year.

The volume of fruit that came into Bosgoed’s kitchen was just enough to feed the approximately 70 eager diners who attended a pawpaw-themed evening at Long Point Eco-Adventures in St. Williams last month.

Pawpaw is Ontario’s only native tropical fruit — beloved by naturalists, prized by chefs, and increasingly guarded by foragers as rising demand sends pawpaw poachers in search of wild groves.

Compounding the culinary challenge f

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