Some foragers head off into forests, meadows and mountains to pick wild edibles. But if you’re looking for forager Danny Childs, also beverage director for The Farm & Fisherman Tavern, don’t forget to check the nearest parking lot.
“In the parking lot behind the restaurant I can get crabapples,” he says, describing the late-autumn bounty of Southern New Jersey, where F&F is located. “We have staghorn sumac growing there, and serviceberries. We pick juniper from there all winter long.”
Working in a densely populated suburban area just outside Philadelphia, “there’s not many meadows around,” he acknowledges. “But I’m always on the lookout. I can almost always find mulberry, sumac, walnuts, oak trees and acorns and honeysuckle—all these things packed with flavor, just waiting to be used.”
“What a lot of bartenders really like about wild stuff, is it’ll have some complexity of flavors you can’t get elsewhere.”
–Tama Matsuoka Wong
And use them he does, in drinks such as the Staycation, a tropical-style drink sweetened with wild chestnut orgeat (see recipe below). Under the umbrella of his consulting company Slow Drinks—also the name of his book, which came out in October—Childs uses his training
