Forager gives dining out a wild new meaning

Ava Chin is known to New Yorkers as the Urban Forager, a blog she writes for The New York Times about scouring city parks and backyards for delectable edibles served up wild by nature.

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Published: 12:17pm, 22 Jun 2014

Ava Chin is known to New Yorkers as the Urban Forager, a blog she writes for about scouring city parks and backyards for delectable edibles served up wild by nature. But while hunting and gathering around the mean streets of America's largest city has become all the rage for back-to-the-source hipsters, Chin, a fifth-generation Chinese-American, learned the art of harvesting morels and mulberries in nature from a less-than-trendy source: her Toisanese grandparents, who raised her after her father abandoned her and her mother. Foraging, says Chin, showed her that she could find her way through her painful past, and go on to self-reliance and a great love that shows in her memoir, . She talked to about how foraging changed her life.

I was a scrappy city kid, and the first wild edible I ever foraged was field garlic, or "wild garlic", from the back courtyard of our apartment building in New York City. It smelled exactly like the scallions my grandfather used to cook with. There was something about finding food picked by my own hands that was powerful and inspiring.

My grandfather was an amazing gourmand and cook. I used to follow him through the aisles of Chinese supermarkets in Flushing, Queens, and he taught me about medicinal roots, and teas and mushrooms. Long after he'd passed away, I discovered a wild relative of the cloud ear mushrooms he cooked with. It reminded me of him and made me feel like I was home again.