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An Underground Market for Home Chefs and Growers
More time is going into The Wild Kitchen dinners, says Rabins, who also leads Wild Food
Walks in and around San Francisco several times a month for $30 per person.
But perhaps Rabins's biggest success so far is the SF Underground Market, a venue for
area locals to buy food grown and cooked by ordinary citizens. "There are a lot of people
who have been making things like jams for years and years, but can't get into a regular
farmers market," he says.
The first market day held earlier this year drew just eight vendors and 200 customers, he
says. But word spread quickly. By the time the last one was held in April, the event attracted
some 70 vendors and 2,000 customers. Labeled a "food rave" because of its warehouse
setting, the shoppers could purchase Hawaiian baked goods, salumi, Jewish deli fare and
jams from locally foraged fruits, to name a few items. "It was pretty epic," Rabins says.
Chef Dontaye Ball, who peddles his specialty pulled pork at the market, credits Rabins for
turning a city already obsessed with chasing the latest culinary trends onto wild edibles.
"He's definitely educating people about the fact that 'Oh, there's wild fennel or dandelion
greens in my backyard and they're edible," says Ball, who has worked in some of San
Francisco's hottest restaurants and runs Good Foods Catering.
The Debate Over Foraging: Safety Versus Taste
Not everyone is gaga over foraged foods. Officials with the San Francisco Department of
Public Health warn that eating foods found in the wild can be risky. Some mushrooms are
toxic, says Richard Lee, director of the department's Environmental Health Regulatory
Program. And then there is the issue of pesticides. "No one knows how much pesticide has
been applied to certain spots," he says.
Rabins insists he goes to great lengths to assure his wild foods are safe. "We're really
careful about the places where we harvest and about thinking what has gone on in the areas
before and what industry may be located nearby," he says. What's more, he says he steers
clear of species of mushrooms for which poisonous ones can resemble the edible ones.
Safety concerns like the ones Lee mentions don't easily deter urban foragers. Even while
working full-time as a professor of nonfiction and journalism at the College of Staten Island-
CUNY, Chin manages to spend two to three hours a week foraging, no matter the season.
Last winter, she tapped her first maple tree -- one growing in a neighbor's yard. She boiled
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