CHICAGO (AP)-California cuisine leave you longing? Your taste for Cajun cooking on the wane? An ambitious band of gourmet farmers and restaurateurs may have the answer for your tired taste buds: “heartland haute cuisine.”

The nation’s breadbasket is out to prove at the grocery and in the best restaurants that Midwest means a whole lot more than corn and soybeans.

At the second annual “Best of the Midwest Market” on Sunday, more than 60 gourmet food purveyors from 10 states strutted their stuff: wild forest gypsy mushrooms from Michigan, Illinois buffalo summer sausage, Nebraska blue corn, wine from Michigan, Illinois caviar and local blue-veined goat cheese.

“We don’t have to borrow it from the West Coast, the East Coast or Europe,” says Jim Eschner, who produces about 1,000 cases of Reisling, Chardonnay and Gewurztraminer wine each year at Winegrow Inc. in Buchanan, Mich. “It’s kind of neat—Midwesterners have got their own identity.”

Winegrow’s wine is served at Chicago’s Printer’s Row restaurant, where chef Michael Foley was among the first to tout Midwestern cuisine.

“We have all sorts of local fish, great games, unbelievable fruits and berries,” said Foley. “We are the stable breadbasket of the nation.”

“Nobody’s apologizing anymore for being Midwest,” Linda Griffith, co-author of the newly published “The Best of the Midwest” cookbook, said in an interview Friday.

Organizers of the Best of the Midwest Market say interest in heartland haute is growing. But it may still take some time for regional specialties to reach supermarket shelves.

“The majority of the market’s foods cannot be found anywhere in Chicago,” said Jill Van Cleave, co-chairman of the event sponsored by the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Wine and Food.

“This is a major concern of ours—to get the marketplace up to a better level,” she said.

Many of the participants run small cottage industries that do their own growing and marketing, cutting out the middleman. The farmer’s market, they say, gives them a chance to showcase their products to a broader audience.