For the Winter 2017 edition of quarterly food magazine The Clever Root, I wrote two articles highlighting wild foods and the chefs who use them. Although the magazine is print-only, I’ve attached PDFs of my stories to give you a (virtual) taste.
Pine, Spruce, and Fir
Adventuresome American chefs have been bringing evergreens indoors. Conifers are spiking everything from cocktails to desserts at restaurants like Prune, Daniel, Noma, and Gramercy Tavern. At Lazy Bear, in San Francisco’s Mission District, chef-owner David Barzelay can’t get enough of the stuff. “It’s probably never the case we have a menu without some conifer on it, somewhere,” he says. “It’s just an ingredient I love so much.”
Read “Evergreen Ingredients” (PDF).
Credit: Mona Shield Payne
Truffles
They’re bewitchingly delicious, and Wilfried Bergerhausen, executive chef at Le Cirque in Las Vegas’s Bellagio, taps that obsession. “People really enjoy white truffle, and once they eat it, they always want more,” he says. His truffle tasting menu offers diners the option to (try to) get their fill. “We actually leave the truffle on the table and they can shave it as they like.”
Fortunately, eating truffle again and again is what you must do when you land a fresh one.
Read “It’s Truffle Time” (PDF).
Evergreens photo credit: Lazy Bear
