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Foragers track down hard-to-source ingredients
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created 4 months ago | Tagged: |
2martens
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There’s a farmer in New Jersey who grows remarkable heritage varieties of cranberries. Johanna Kolodny wants to reach her. The farmer doesn’t have e-mail, however, and her new cell phone doesn’t deliver voice messages. It just lets her know the phone numbers of people who called. “She calls you back if she wants to,” said Kolodny, who recently was hired by Print, a new restaurant in New York’s Ink 48 hotel, as the on-staff forager.
Kolodny doesn’t actually do the foraging herself. She’s one of a growing number of specialists who are trying to fill in the missing links in supply chains of some of the more hard-to-find items at a time when sourcing and sustainability are becoming more important to consumers.
Most chefs, having kitchens to run, don’t generally have time to wrangle with reclusive farmers and quirky foragers, or to hunt through the woods on their own for obscure ingredients. That’s where people like Kolodny come in, or Erin Littlestar, who recently was hired to be the sustainability and sourcing manager, or “sourceress,” of Sweetgreen. The fast-casual salad and frozen-yogurt chain just opened its fourth unit in the Washington, D.C., area and is on target to open two more units this year.
