Photo: Mikuni Wild Harvest
Micah Wexler
Kris Morningstar
Ray Garcia
Tony Esnault
Jason Kim
Antonio Mure
By Joshua Lurie
For dineLA.com
Southern California undoubtedly has some of the best produce on the planet, and chefs scour farmers markets year-round to score the pick of the litter. However, a small contingent of LA chefs have taken sourcing to another level, investing in and collaborating with foragers who travel to distant locales in order to reach off-the-grid farms and forests.
Kerry Clasby | Photo: Jordan Strass
Kerry Clasby earned the “Intuitive Forager” moniker by following her instincts to find more than 200 California farms and markets. She regularly supplies local chefs like Patina’s Tony Esnault, FIG’s Ray Garcia and Ray’s Kris Morningstar. High-profile East Coast chefs such as Tom Colicchio, José Andrés, Mario Batali and April Bloomfield also benefit from her expertise. Clasby works with chefs who have “the same vision,” meaning they’re both “dedicated to get the best.” That synergy (and extra effort) isn’t cheap, but she said, “Chefs put their money where their mouths are…It’s like the Marines. I’m looking for a few good chefs.”
She previously worked with hardware companies like Xerox and IBM in Massachusetts, but discovered she had a way with tomatoes. After moving to California, an avocado farmer needed help at the Calabasas farmers market, and Clasby covered his stand, so long as she could also sell her tomatoes. A Santa Barbara forager who goes by Paulie Mushrooms taught her to source his namesake species, and she gradually expanded her repertoire.
Clasby currently employs six people to help support her efforts, which ramped up in 2008 when the economy dipped and people became “really choosy about where they were going.” She said chefs honed in even more on “organic, fresh from the farm” products, and she was willing to drive or fly the extra miles to meet their needs. “There’s a certain element of deep satisfaction that comes from selling the best,” says Clasby, who added, “I also find great satisfaction in supporting small farms and farmers.” She also prefers to eat the best products.
“For me it’s so gratifying to go into my truck and show them what I have,” says Clasby, who rolls up to restaurants with a different stash each week. She used avocados as an example, describing them as “outrageous, buttery, high oil content, complex flavors.” José Andrés seems to agree. He recently fell for a Clasby avocado. As Clasby said, he sliced the avocado, “took caviar, put caviar in the middle, and then caviar lime, rolled it up and popped it into his mouth.”
In avocados, mushrooms and life, Clasby has a core belief system, saying, “There is an intuitive force that will lead you through the proper timing for each thing. Letting go and being in that flow is the key.”
Tyler Gray | Photo: Mikuni Wild Harvest
At Mikuni Wild Harvest, Tyler Gray employs a fleet of “sustainable foragers, small farmers and unique craftsmen” from as far west as Alaska and as far east as Europe to source mushrooms, vegetables, berries and more. Reps at offices in Vancouver, Seattle, Las Vegas and New York share a weekly catalog with chefs at LA restaurants like Petrossian Café, M.B. Post and A.O.C., continually updating “new finds and unique ingredients as the seasons progress.”
“There are certain ingredients that other people can’t get,” says Gray, who relies on people like Running Squirrel (aka Earl Ahern), a Native American septuagenarian who’s developed a special salad mix and hunts down wild ginger root, blue spruce tips and licorice root. Other foragers pursue a single ingredient. This fall, Gray is looking forward to tapping into treasure troves of wild mountain mulberries, unusual mushroom varieties like pine and cauliflower and white Alba truffles that “permeate the warehouses around the Mikuni network with that sweet smell.”
Photo by Joshua Lurie
The beyond seasonal, locally oriented chef/co-owner of Mezze first started working with Clasby when he was a sous chef at Craft Los Angeles. Micah Wexler still remembers getting called outside to what he described as a “beat-up moving truck.” The door quickly gave way to a “wonderland of amazing fruits, vegetables, herbs, everything.” Clasby since became his go-to produce supplier.
He still shops in Santa Monica on Wednesday, but likes how Clasby “kind of brings the farmers market to me,” working with family farms that grow exclusively for her. As he said, “Every chef wants to be able to have access to the best possible ingredients, right? Working with foragers and small farmers is the best way for us to be able to do that.”
When Wexler wants ingredients he’s only seen in books (like a fresh version of the Middle Eastern herb called za'atar), he’ll call Clasby. As he said, “If it can be found or grown somewhere in California, she’ll make it happen.” In September, Wexler cut six varieties of heirloom melon into geometric shapes and plated them with olive oil jam, frozen shaved feta “snow” and Clasby's za'atar. She also taught him about Flavor King pluots, dino plums and a trippy tomato called the Jimi Hendrix with green, red and orange stripes.
Wexler works within the framework of “micro-seasons” that may last only a week for ingredients like mulberries. “Working with her and some of the other farmers, they really guide what happens in this restaurant,” says Wexler. “As soon as something’s not in the peak of its season, we move on.” That’s why chicken liver went from sour plum mostarda to striped plum, and then Concord grape.
Photo: Joshua Lurie
Now the executive chef at LACMA's marquee restaurant, Kris Morningstar has worked with Clasby and her right hand man Dragan Ivanovic since his Patina days. Morningstar also relies on Lance Biggers, his former sous chef at District. He described the Santa Monica farmers market as “awesome,” but said, “I feel like I’m getting the best produce I’ve ever had in my career right now.”
Biggers has moved on to goat cheese making at Drake Family Farms, but still forages for his former boss. He brings Morningstar stinging nettles, mulberries, Meyer lemons and more. Since Biggers was a fellow chef, they’re able to bounce dish ideas off each other.
Morningstar is a seasoned veteran, but Clasby and Ivanovic are still introducing him to new produce, including candy stripe figs, which are apparently “super red, raspberry jam colored on the inside.” He was particularly impressed that Clasby and Ivanovic found Basque guindilla peppers, which he promptly pickled and matched with housemade smoked chorizo, gigante beans, soft cooked egg and toast. Coming up, he’s excited to work with wild celery and persimmons.
Photo: Joshua Lurie
FIG executive chef Ray Garcia has worked with Clasby for eight years, ever since she pulled up outside The Belvedere bearing bags of mushrooms. She’s increased her reach and repertoire, allowing FIG to supplement Santa Monica finds. As Garcia said, “I have the best farmers market in the country, and I go down there every Wednesday and Saturday, but there’s still only so many farmers that come to the market.” He equated working with Clasby to “having extra tools in your tool belt.”
Garcia remains in constant contact with Clasby while she’s in the field. For example, “She might shoot me an e-mail or a photo out in the field saying, ‘Chef, I have this great new product.’ Okay, I’ll take a case of that, or a pound of that, or as much as you can get of that.” They also discuss availability. If the ingredient is around for a while, Garcia can make it a menu “cornerstone,” or a daily special if it's not. “She has a great eye, an incredible eye for detail, spotting the best of the best,” says Garcia.
Garcia said, “Usually she brings in the products and lets them speak for themselves, and the chefs (in this case, me) put our own sort of spin on it.” Garcia has been known to build a dish around a particular olive oil, vinegar, or even goat yogurt. Recently, he created a salad of Arctic Jay nectarines, La Quercia coppa piccante, sage and goat yogurt. This fall, he’s looking forward to cooking with rhubarb, ramps, mushrooms and apples, saying, “A lot of times it’s the simple ingredients that we overlook that we’re most surprised with.”'
Photo: Joshua Lurie
Alain Ducasse protégée Tony Esnault joined the Patina Group’s flagship restaurant at Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2009. He still frequents the Santa Monica and Hollywood farmers markets, but relishes his relationship with Clasby, saying, “It’s like you have somebody you trust a lot to pick the best vegetables for you, the pick of the season.” She typically arrives with a choice, which allows him to be specific, down to the half-inch. He said, “She’s a good forager because she can tell us what is good, what will be good, what will be in season.” Esnault and Clasby took their collaboration up a notch earlier this year, when they teamed with Harry's Berries on a market dinner at Patina, which hearkened back to Esnault’s childhood in France, when he ate strawberry tarts for his birthday.
Last month, he constructed a market salad using round yellow cucumbers heirloom tomatoes and a simple dressing of sherry vinegar and olive oil. He poached Clasby’s duck eggs, plated them on toasted brioche, and surrounded the eggs with morels and multiple preparations of asparagus: roasted, shaved and fried, with a sauce made with asparagus cream and a slice of asparagus terrine. Esnault tasked Clasby with finding fresh almonds, and two months later she delivered, resulting in almond gazpacho with radish, cucumber, celery and poached lobster. For fall, he plans to team heirloom beans with lamb.
Photo: Joshua Lurie
To access hard-to-find or higher quality ingredients, Forage chef-owner Jason Kim decided to move beyond markets from the beginning of business at his cafe, located near Silver Lake’s Sunset Junction. Anybody with a Certified Producers Certificate (CPC) from the California Department of Food and Agriculture is eligible to bring produce to Forage. However, just because you grow your own doesn’t mean you’ll end up on the blackboard with other distinguished foragers. As Kim said, “It has to taste good.” Adam & Jenna from Mid-City have been bringing in cantaloupe, the “best arugula” and “amazing figs,” the latter which joined peaches in a salad. Malika & Donny recently drove over from Pasadena with “scorching hot jalapenos,” which went into a slaw for sandwiches. Craig & Gary from Winnetka contribute cucumbers, Italianate tomatoes, chicories and spigarello.
Photo: Alex Bisarello
While working for five years at a famous ski resort in the mountainous Dolomites, Antonio Mure developed a taste for mushrooms. At Piccolo and La Botte, the native Sicilian used to source fungi from Paulie Mushrooms. As the executive chef at Ado in Venice, Mure turns to Jim Murez of Tradewind Mushrooms, who appears on Fridays at the Venice Farmers Market. Last month, he was motivated by morel, chanterelle and porcini mushrooms, which appeared in myriad specials. He graced fettuccini with scallops and porcini roasted garlic sauce, langoustines with yellow foot mushrooms and a veal chop with chanterelles and Marsala wine vinaigrette. “Truffle Brothers” Marco and Michael Pietroiacovo supply white and black truffles that fuel premium fall dishes.
