Forage & Chatter

forageandchatter

http://www.forageandchatter.com

Forage | Sustainable Dining Vancouver

In Forage we continue to donate funds from our filtered water program to enhancing the student learning garden at Cheakamus Centre up in Squamish.

The funds we, and our Whistler property, have raised have helped them purchase a greenhouse which will develop their garden program, supply their kitchen with fresh produce, and be yet another chance to teach their students about growing their own food.

Cheakamus Centre is a 420 acre ecological reserve and education facility in Squamish, BC.

The garden program, along with other programs at the farm, is delivered to 6700 students each year.

These experiential programs give students hands on learning around aquatic, forest and food eco systems with a focus on environmental stewardship.

Joanna Blythman restaurant review: Forage and Chatter 9½/10 ...

About a year ago when Forage and Chatter set up in this spot I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention.

Up comes the complimentary Forage and Chatter fried bread- a hot roll that reminds me of fried pizza dough- along with a downy-white quenelle of cultured yogurt butter dusted with wild mushroom powder, and a cheese and nut-free ‘pesto’ that owes its body and bright colour to dill and parsley.

A starter of winter vegetable salad, house-made ricotta, and herb oil looks strikingly clean-cut and bright, if worryingly slight, but I steadily admire it more with each mouthful of its furry yet firm Jerusalem artichoke, sweetly pickled curls of finely shaved beetroot, soft leeks, smooth young cheese, punchy celery leaves, and green glinting oil.

It looks stunning, if sparse, but with every molecule of its thin, crisp puff pastry base, its taupe-coloured onion mush, the velveteen whirls of the curd, its shallots fried crisply in rings and cooked crunchy to make delicate little cups, its paper-thin slices of pearly, fresh garlic, my respect grows.

Cod, from the good value lunch menu, is just as assured with its amber-gold, buttery crust, a little stew of the green flags of leek, hard-fried yellow-fleshed potatoes, and a punchy caper sauce that’s half way to being a salsa verde.

Forage & Chatter, Edinburgh, Restaurant Review - Scotsman Food ...

Forage & Chatter serves the sort of food that's best appreciated in silence, says Gaby Soutar Well, it’s because many of our ingredients are…” “Yes, and we want people to relax and feel free to…” You know when you ask a stupid question about a restaurant’s name, when it’s very self explanatory?

Our imaginative starters, chosen from the à la carte menu (though there’s also a two course lunch deal for £14.95, three for £17.95), also required a bit of meditative concentration.

She’d gone for the veggie option of mushroom carpaccio (£8.50), which featured fat beefy slabs of white mushroom flesh, a cushion of mushroom purée, three breadcrumbed bollards of goat’s cheese, sorrel leaves, a mushy purée and a mushy powder.

My main of monkfish (£17.50) was only slightly warmer than my starter, though it was still good comfort eating for those who like sweet savouries, with draught excluder sized chunks of spiced fish, a squash purée, toasted seeds and a bay-infused melted butter moat.

Claire went for pearl barley (£15) – a creamy risotto with chives and nanoparticle-sized bits of veg, plus cubes of roasted celeriac, kale, more blobs of the balsamic-y onion purée and slippery onion bits.

Forage & Chatter restaurant review | pebble magazine

Restaurant review: Forage has the right ingredients | Stuff.co.nz

The refit extends to Forage, the new restaurant on the ground floor, overlooking the settlers cottages below and the cityscape beyond.

While never straying far with their modern takes upon classical European cooking, the chefs demonstrate a high level of technique, which is just as well, for like any high-end hotel restaurant, Forage is expensive: our dinner bill for two came to $172 (and that's with just one glass of wine apiece).

Despite this restaurant's name, we received no foraged leaves or fungi, so as if to make up the shortfall, the menu goes into great detail about the provenance of each main ingredient.

When my guest congratulated the other waiter on the restrained use of sugar in our coffee brulee, its biscotti and our pecan pie, her internal robot murmured: "That's alright."

Ground floor, Hotel Mercure, 345 The Terrace Ph: (04) 385 9829 Fully licensed Open 7 days for breakfast, lunch and dinner Price range of mains: $31.50-$39 Cost: $149 for two (excluding wine)

Native: restaurant review | Jay Rayner

On a menu of four starters and four mains, significant numbers of the ingredients – pig’s trotters and cauliflower, Lincolnshire Poacher cheese and chick peas, eggs and cabbage – aren’t wild at all.

What’s more, many of the other ingredients which might have been foraged or shot in the wild, can be farmed, such as pears, venison, pheasant and clams.

For a start if the idea behind Native is such a good one, presumably all restaurants ought to be sourcing ingredients this way.

A non-meat starter of pickled pear and slices of salty Lincolnshire Poacher cheese manages to be much bigger and bolder than the sum of its parts.

According to the menu trends report from analysts Horizons, which studies the menus of 121 pub, restaurant and hotel brands, listings for mac ’n’ cheese are up 550%.