Wild Food on an Urban Platter

Have you heard of foraging?

Oh, come, come, it's all the rage.

"Foraging" is basically being a modern-day hunter/gatherer. Apparently, there is food everywhere, all around us, if only we were paying attention. And were carrying a spade, gardening gloves and a copy of "Guide to Edible Plants As Opposed to the Ones That Will Kill You Immediately" in our pocketbooks.

I first learned of foraging in a New Yorker article entitled "The Food At Our Feet". There is a restaurant in Copenhagen called Noma which has won every award in the foodie book and garners much, or most, of their cuisine through foraging. The dishes run along the lines of Wild Sow Thistle Cooked in Pigeon Juice and Sea Urchin Wrapped in Beach Horseradish and Grilled Salad Puree of Spinach, Wild Herbs, Ground Edler, Spanish Chervil, Chickweed and Goosefoot with a Morel and Juniper Wood Broth.

This is incredible to me.

So incredible that I've decided to open my own restaurant serving only the 'food that is at my feet'.

The food foraged from Hoboken, New Jersey.

Appetizers

A Salad of Playground Grasses Drizzled with Free-Range Labradoodle Urine

Tender Community Garden Slugs Wrapped in Emulsified Flier Paper Harvested From Toyota Windshields and Laced With Crispy Gravel

Main dishes

Confused NYC Pigeon Eggs on a Bed of Plastic Flowers From Italian Catholics Front Porch Blessed Mother Shrines 

Dumpster Diver Nuggets with Hudson River Crème Fraiche

Flood Zone Worm 'Noodles' with Upside Down Tomato Planter Sauce

Vacant Lot Moss Tossed With Squirrel Roadkill and Finished with Heirloom Poison Ivy Reduction

Desserts

Mud Cake. Made with Authentic Hoboken Mud.

'Frank Sinatra Tiramisu', Made with Authentic Severed Lady Fingers and Dusted with Authentic Frank Sinatra Ashes

Dog Crap

BON APPÈTIT! 

photo credit: Jason Michael via photo pin cc

Comments

[tracey]

Foraging in the CITY??? That's kinda... gross. For all the reasons listed, especially the idea of the heavy pollution, random cigarette butts, etc. Forage in the woods? Yes. City? Not so much.

[valmg @ Mom Knows It All]

That's a wild menu, even for this Jersey girl!

[tara]

That makes dumpster diving for food sound appetizing ;) haha.

[SuburbanCorrespondent]

My kids forage for cheap pizza coupons. Does that count?

[Ann]

This is HILARIOUS. Dog crap. I just adore you.

[Kristin]

STOP.

There is no way. No. Stop it.

[Alexandra]

Beauty, kindness, wit....all wrapped up in one flame headed woman.

xo

[Stephanie Hunt]

You could so totally start a restaurant -- theme: creative re-use.
We take this stuff seriously in San Francisco. We have a restaurant called Gratitude where you order dishes with names like "I am abundant" and the server says back to you "You are abundant." I ate there once. No food is cooked over a certain temperature.

[Anna Lefler]

Dog crap? Well, now you're looking in MY personal cookbook, lady.

I call it Doomsday Prepper chic.

;-) A.

[tara]

OMG Stephanie - I would just bust a gut to #1) actually order food with a name like that #2) receive that response after ordering said food. That's like a serious food religion right there

[Lady Jennie]

Ugh! I have plenty of snails to throw in for free.

[Jenners]

Oh this was great!!! I was giggling throughout. But beware … there are probably people who would herald this as "the next big thing" in haute cuisine!

[Stephanie Hunter]

Absolutely hilarious!

[The Flying Chalupa]

I think I threw up a little at the Hudson River creme fraiche.

So, so funny.

And disgusting.

You do Hoboken proud, woman.