Foraging on the streets of San Francisco

Informal tables and the hearth at Saison

On most mornings, chef Joshua Skenes is already hard at work long before the rest of San Francisco is stirring. Beneath a layer of fog, Skenes digs, scours and searches the outer reaches of this compact city for many of the items likely to appear on that evening’s menu at his restaurant, Saison.

Working with a pair of assistants in a secret location “somewhere near the Golden Gate Bridge”, 31-year-old Skenes is a modern-day forager, seeking out unusual ingredients such as sorrel flowers, nasturtium, wild radish and fennel, to complement the restaurant’s local meat and seafood. All is harvested, packed in moist towels and kitchen-ready by sunrise.

Trained at New York’s French Culinary Institute and a veteran of the kitchens of Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Michael Mina in New York, Skenes has developed Saison from a once-weekly supper club to a three-nights and now five-nights-a-week formal restaurant, all within the space of a year. Despite the upscaling, his food has changed little, with a flagship eight-course tasting menu now accompanied by à la carte offerings.

The restaurant is located in a renovated 19th-century carriage house, now a collective for local foodie, design and architecture companies. Surrounding the site is the Mission District, historically a Latino neighbourhood, popular with the high-tech and fashion crowds but which still favours tacos and refried beans over the kind of rarefied cuisine offered by Skenes. But there is room for all tastes and, after a recent make-over, the restaurant’s cosy dining room and airy courtyard feel (almost) as relaxed and homey as the Mission’s burrito joints.

Purple banquettes and wooden tables keep Saison’s atmosphere casual inside, while out back is a fiery open hearth for spit-roasting fish and meats over smoky logs. Around the restaurant and on the roof are gardens growing much of what Skenes cannot forage, such as wild strawberries, cucumbers and heirloom tomatoes.

Chef Joshua Skenes

Saison may be the most talked about, but it’s certainly not the only San Francisco restaurant to espouse this “source-near/serve-now” ethos. Indeed, in a city that seems devoted to so-called “locavorism”, chefs such as Skenes have never been more reliant on small-scale regional estates and even urban farms. As for foraging, it’s become an official northern California movement complete with its own affinity group – two-year-old ForageSF – that hosts monthly foraged tasting menus and organises an “underground” market.

This passion for close-contact cultivation benefits chefs and farmers, particularly boutique, city-centre growers. “With a travel time of 15 minutes by bike instead of two hours by truck ... urban farmers can better respond to chefs’ needs,” says Mei Ling Hui, urban forest co-ordinator at San Francisco’s environment department. “Urban farmers, meanwhile, need to make more per pound to survive than larger farms and restaurants may be able to pay more for produce than private people.”

The relationship is also on display at the modern Italian Flour + Water, another new Mission District restaurant. Thomas McNaughton, the chef, has partnered with the 10-acre Knoll Farms in San Francisco’s East Bay to supply the figs, stone fruits, tomatoes and greens that are used for hand-made pizzas and pastas.

Chef Gary Rulli – the man behind Marin County’s Emporio Rulli and San Francisco’s Ristobar and Il Caffe at Union Square – keeps things even closer to home. He has recently planted a garden on a slope above his house in Marin growing heirloom tomatoes, Tuscan kale, fresh herbs and summer squash. The produce is supplements rather than replaces his existing suppliers, “but it’s looking to become a pretty big supplement”, Rulli says. Meanwhile, at downtown St Regis Hotel, chef Romuald Ferger is cultivating the on-site Terrace Garden to supply fresh herbs, celery and fennel for both its restaurants and treatments at the hotel’s Remède Spa.

A similar set-up is in place at the Hotel Palomar, whose Fifth Floor restaurant grows herbs from its own gardens for use both in food and cocktails.

After service has finished back at Saison, Skenes will compost kitchen waste to “complete the growth circle”. And come the following morning, he’ll be back in the field searching for the roots, herbs and flowers. “For me this is about finding the deepest point in a flavour,” Skenes says. “You see it in foraging, you see it in spit roasting,” he adds. “Fire and foraging: the purest forms of flavour.”

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Metropolitan farms: Raised in the city

Tomatoes from Chicago

Ken Dunn has transformed an abandoned crack-house garden in downtown Chicago. The 70th Street City Farm offers a variety of vegetables “but tomatoes are what we’re known for,” says Dunn. Established in August 2000, the farm produces more than 30 varieties of tomatoes for some of Chicago’s top restaurants. www.resourcecenterchicago.org

Herbs from Toronto

David Garcelon, head chef at the Fairmont Royal York, began growing herbs on the hotel’s roof in 2004. “We’re the only hotel and restaurant in Toronto with its own on-site herb garden,” he says. It covers 4,000 sq ft and houses 17 different herb beds growing a range of plants. including organic basil, parsley, sage and tarragon. www.fairmont.com/royalyork

Pork from Dublin

Ella McSweeney began keeping Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs because “they’re such charismatic creatures; pigs are witty. They do something to humans that no other animals can.” She feeds them discarded fruit and vegetables from local greengrocers before butchering them at Dublin-based sausage-maker Hicks. www.hicks.ie

Honey from London

Honey connoisseurs Jonathan Millar and Steve Benbow look after the 200,000 Black Welsh bees whose hives sit on the roof of Fortnum & Mason’s store in Piccadilly. “The warm, dry weather has resulted in a larger quantity of honey this year,” Millar says. “The hives are heaving and will produce around 1,000 pots.” www.fortnumandmason.com

Chicken from New York

Yonnette Fleming has raised Rhode Island Reds at her Brooklyn farm since last year. She believes that feeding her hens organic scraps makes their eggs “more filling than eggs from supermarkets”. Keeping chickens is now so popular in the US that it has spawned numerous instruction manuals, dubbed “the new chick lit”. www.hattiecarthancommunitymarket.com

Kirsty Blake-Knox

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The details

Saison, 2124 Folsom Street, (+1415­828­7990; www.saisonsf.com)

Flour+Water, 2401 HarrisonStreet, (+1415­826­7000; www.flourandwater.com)

Emporio Rulli (several locations, www.rulli.com)

Fifth Floor Restaurant, 12 Fourth Street, (+1415­348­1555; www.fifthfloorrestaurant.com)

St Regis San Francisco, 125 Third Street, (+1415­284­4000; www.starwoodhotels.com)