How To Find a Forager
We spoke with Michael Wachter, a regenerative forager who collaborates closely with chefs, to discuss how restaurants can best support responsible foraging.
Wild foods offer a rich variety of flavours that can enhance menus and introduce diversity to our offerings. By collaborating with local foragers, restaurants have the opportunity to showcase their bioregion, creating a unique identity for each dish. Instead of relying on the same ingredients found everywhere, partnering with sensitive, local foragers allows restaurants to embrace seasonality and locality to stand out from the crowd.
However, there’s a dark underside to the foraging industry: with the rising popularity of foraged foods, e.g. wild garlic, some commercial foragers have exploited ecologically sensitive sites for financial gain, travelling to locations they don’t know and harming local spots beyond recovery through unsustainable harvesting practices. Here, we take a look at how to showcase local wild foods on your menu, the right way. See our key takeaways below:
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Go Local: Supporting a local forager beats buying from commercial companies on taste, freshness, and local ecology, economy, and culture.
Be Flexible: Ask for flavours rather than specific ingredients. Wild foods can have fleeting or unpredictable seasons. Some years, it can be irresponsible to harvest any.
Follow The Foragers’ Association Principles: Talk to your forager and ensure they’re committed to best practice. This is a baseline!
Context Matters: The impact of foraging varies depending on context, timing, and location. Some things are locally abundant but nationally scarce, or vice versa.
Forage on Farms! Introduce your forager to your grower! Foraging on farms reduces pressure on rare wild habitat and can encourage growers to leave habitat year-round.
The State of Foraging
The recent surge in restaurants using wild foods to elevate their menus has led to serious concerns about over-foraging. In certain areas, ecosystems are being pushed to their limits, as chefs seek ingredients that may be nationally abundant but are locally scarce. This is why it’s essential chefs build relationships with local foragers who understand the impact of their harvests and can inform chefs about/make decisions that prioritise the local ecology.
“Foraging should be localised - every location has its own biocultural heritage”.
Regenerative Foraging
Regenerative foraging acknowledges that humans interact within ecosystems and play a vital role as a keystone species. It includes foraging practices that add complexity and biodiversity (like planting some of the acorns you’ve harvested). Compared to extractive foraging which sees plants as a resource, regenerative foraging is an active form of land stewardship. It complies with The Association of Foragers’ principles but has a greater focus on ecology.
The Benefits of Working with a Forager.
Michael worked closely with Brendan Eades (previously of Silo) from Tillingham Organics, where they both learned from and inspired each other. Michael would bring Brendan a variety of wild flavours, which Brendan would transform into extraordinary dishes. See below for more details of their amazing partnership and some of the inspiring dishes
“chefs need to be flexible. Don’t request ingredients – ask for flavours – trust your forager to only bring you what’s abundant.”
Finding the Right Forager
There are currently no professional regulations for foragers beyond basic laws. Michael believes chefs should work with foragers who follow the principles of The Foragers Association.
As chefs, our role is to obtain verbal confirmation that the foragers we collaborate with adhere to these principles. Whilst it's not a perfect system, it's a great starting point. Beyond that, look to people who really understand and care deeply about the local ecology.
Foraging on Farms
The trouble with foraging in wild places is that there are so few left in the country. This means that, even with responsible and ecologically sensitive foraging, there’s always a risk that you might disturb important habitat. Foraging on farms means we can reduce pressure on these rare wild spaces whilst also encouraging growers to leave certain areas of the farm wild, which in turn creates more habitat! It also ensures that you won’t end up on the wrong side of the law – it is illegal to forage from public access land for commercial purposes. Foraging on private land with the landowner’s permission is always the safest bet!
Chef Brendan Eades
“When you find someone deeply invested and passionate about what they do, it shines through - then you bounce ideas off each other.”
The collaborative relationship between Brendan and Michael thrived on mutual learning and listening, making the process of writing menus both easier and more innovative. Brendan and his team were introduced to new and exciting flavours and ingredients, with Michael arriving not just with a box of produce but also with tasters that inspired the entire chef team. While Brendan had to remain flexible, working with the unique ingredients Michael provided made that flexibility not only necessary but immensely rewarding.
By the end of their collaboration, their working relationship had evolved. Brendan stopped requesting specific ingredients and instead asked Michael to deliver flavours — the essence of the local woodland floor for a stock or a hedgerow flavoured salad. Michael would return with exactly what was needed, always adding an element of surprise and inspiration. Brendan would then take the time to share the final dishes with Michael, further deepening their creative partnership.
Together, they even hosted dinners showcasing the abundance of their local area, celebrating the connection between food and its natural origins.
This is the kind of enriching relationship we would love to see more of that has real potential to create delicious food but also ensure a deeper commitment to protecting and celebrating our wild spaces.
