When Jonathan Anderson made his Dior womenswear debut in Paris last month, the invitation raised eyebrows: a porcelain plate, boxed and affixed with chestnuts. Not your usual Parisian gilt-edged stationery. The chestnut—nutrient dense, hardy, quietly elegant—is a symbol with global resonance. It connotes wisdom for the Celts, fortune for Italians and Japanese, and fertility for Koreans. Call it what you will, but it’s a global talisman. Maybe for Anderson, it was a message: something ancient, resilient, and good to come.

And yet, in everyday life, the chestnut doesn’t quite get its flowers. Its color is one of the more drab shades of brown. It’s the nut that grandma set out in a bowl that no one touched. It’s a lyric in a Christmas carol. But lately, this humble nut is having a renaissance. Chefs, bartenders, and even spas are reimagining it.

“I built a frozen Italian foods brand, worked in hospitality, and somehow ended up back in the world of trees,” said Sasha Sherman, founder of The Great Chestnut Experiment—part farming project, part reforestation effort, part cultural movement. Their chestnut gift boxes are chic and tactile, complete with roasting instructions and a handy scoring tool. “I remember the first time someone instructed me on how to plant a chestnut seedling: You tamp down the roots, kiss the top of the seedling, and imagine this tree growing tall enough to share a family for generations.”

Photo: Gil Fuqua / Courtesy of the Great Chestnut Experiment

Romantic, no? And it’s also practical. Once upon a time, chestnuts ruled the eastern woodlands of North America, with billions of trees stretching from Maine to Mississippi. They were the sequoias of the east at 100 feet tall and 16 feet wide, with a harvest that could feed farmers and animals alike. American colonists built homes out of chestnut wood, baked with chestnut flour, and in some cases even paid taxes in chestnuts. Everything was coming up roses for the American chestnut until the early 1900s, when a fungal blight from imported ornamental trees nearly wiped them all out.

It’s taken over a century, but chestnut farming is bouncing back. “There’s been an explosion of new chestnut plantings across America,” Sherman told me. For decades, the U.S. had imported more chestnuts than it grew itself, but the tides are turning. U.S. chestnut acreage has doubled in the last five years, and is set to quadruple by the early 2030s. It’s a movement driven largely by small farmers, the non-profits who lobby on their behalf, and sustainability advocates who see chestnuts not just as a singular nut, but as an entire system.

“They’re amazing for farmers,” said Sherman. “It’s a long-term investment, but it really creates resilience and abundance.”

Resilience is an understatement. Chestnut trees hold soil, resist erosion, and absorb carbon from the atmosphere. They nurture biodiversity and offer shade. And they’re delicious. Chef Dan Barber of Blue Hill fame put it simply: “A fresh chestnut is distinctive for its creaminess… like nothing else. The flavor of a well-grown American chestnut can’t be beat.”

A basket filled with freshly harvest chestnuts and prickly chestnut burrs.

Photo: Paolo Graziosi / Getty Images

Curiosity piqued by Dior’s show invites and several expert opinions, I needed to know more. Once I started looking, I switched chestnuts everywhere. The iconic Writers Bar at Raffles Hotel Singapore has a cocktail “Spinoza’s Toast,” which uses the warmth and depth of chestnuts in balance against sherry and sencha. They’re a natural pairing for hearty, homey pastas, whether that’s with farfalle and aged gruyère at the Michelin-starred Francie in Brooklyn, or in Rich Table’s agnolotti with black truffle and brown butter in San Francisco. Sceney Soho spot Maison Close does a veal Wellington that eschews traditional mushroom duxelles in favor of chestnut stuffing. And at a recent dinner at Nine in Boston, I was delighted to find that a pheasant roulade came filled with a flavorful, velveteen purée of chestnuts and apple.

They’ve also been popping up in spa treatments, like at Italy’s Lefay Resort & Spa Dolomiti, where body scrubs are derived from local chestnut flowers and the anti-inflammatory extracts of chestnut seeds. (That’s the treatment to book if you’re there for the Winter Olympics.) They’re giftable: Portugalia Marketplace, a Fall River, Massachusetts specialty shop that imports hard-to-find Portuguese foodstuffs, sells heavenly apple and chestnut jam, as well as chestnut honey and snackable peeled chestnuts in sleeves, all of which can be shipped nationwide. And they’re in candles, too: Apotheke makes a Cardamom Chestnut candle that’s earthy, spicy, and perfect for the colder months.

The chestnut’s versatility is owed to their unique texture. They’re considered a nut but are actually fruits, and technically behave more like tubers, offering the starchy, meaty, slightly sweet flesh almost between a sweet potato and chickpea. They’re harvested in early fall, which might be why they’re synonymous with the holidays. They roast beautifully, of course, but they also purée like a dream: chestnut paste remains a coveted French grocery store ingredient that travelers routinely sneak in their suitcases home.

Photo: Gil Fuqua / Courtesy of the Great Chestnut Experiment

But what makes chestnuts special isn’t their flavor or nostalgia. It’s their potential. Imaging trading acres of factory-farmed corn and soy for bucolic groves of chestnut trees: stabilizing soil, feeding ecosystems, storing carbon. The benefits could be enormous. Nostalgic, yes, but also quietly revolutionary. In that way, chestnuts feel very Dior. And if you happen to roast some on an open fire this holiday season, Jack Frost nipping at your nose, consider that you’re part of something much bigger than a holiday snack. You’re participating in one of the more elegant comebacks in American food.