Foraging in New Jersey is taking off. Where to eat mushrooms, stinging nettles and more

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• Foraging in New Jersey picks up in April with ramps, mushrooms, stinging nettles, fiddlehead ferns and more blooming.
• Dozens of restaurants in North Jersey, including Summit House, create unique dishes from foraged foods.
• Turn to trusted resources and local workshops to get started on your own foraging journey.

On a Thursday afternoon in April, Chef AJ Capella gets a food delivery at his Summit House restaurant. Except it’s not Sysco, US Foods or any other major restaurant supplier at the door; it’s Dan Lipow of Foraged Feast and he has boxes of food foraged, mostly, from New Jersey soil.

“When I can, I buy anything he finds,” Capella says.

This week, Lipow’s delivery — picked on private, wooded New Jersey property, grown on his land or sourced from foragers outside the state — includes Japanese knotweed, ramps, watercress, daylily shoots, garlic mustard and magnolia blossoms. 

Right now, in mid-April, nature presents a bounty of wild edibles in New Jersey. Lipow is working almost every day with his team to pick early spring wild foods in very short windows of availability. For the 30-year foraging vet, it’s so far, so good this year.

“The pick we had two days ago was fantastic,” he says. “Three of us on that day picked about 100 pounds of greens of different varieties. That’s a pretty healthy amount of produce coming out of three people from developed resources.”

New Jersey is fertile ground for foraging — its mix of clay and sand soils, mountains and shore biomes and midrange hardiness zoning means there are plenty of wild greens, edible flowers, mushrooms and more to pick and eat. Folks like Lipow have made businesses out of them; he currently supplies dozens of North Jersey restaurants with his found food. 

Foraging requires experience and education. Luckily, there are also several workshops and educators in the state to get people started on the journey.

Foraged foods at New Jersey restaurants

Chef and forager Phil Manganaro runs the small Park Place Cafe and Restaurant in Merchantville. He says 90% of what he serves was gathered from within a 15-mile radius of his South Jersey spot (though he does venture north in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and takes foraging trips to Maine.) On the day we spoke, Manganaro had returned from picking the curled fiddlehead ferns atop the oyster fern plant, only around for about eight days.

“If you want to experience the true terroir of natural food in New Jersey, that’s what I do and it’s all year,” he says. “I preserve stuff. I freeze stuff. I dehydrate stuff a lot. It’s the truest expression of New Jersey seasons.” 

What does that look like on a menu? This week, Manganaro’s serving squab (pigeon) with tossed violet greens and fresh-picked violets and a violet flower simple syrup. 

“I look forward to it every year,” he says. “It’s only [possible for] two weeks, and you can’t replicate it.”

Manganaro says he challenges himself to use foraged goods in different ways every year. Last week, he steeped flowers in heavy cream and whipped them into a cloud on which he put fish. With ramps — the wild allium that boomed in popularity five or so years ago — he might serve a puree of the greens, a puree of the bulbs and the dehydrated leaves in one dish.

Capella says he loves a grilled ramp and though he too tries not to repeat anything, might fall back on some classic pairings like chanterelle mushrooms with fish. Crystal Springs Resort in Sussex County, meanwhile, has one of the only all-foraged bar botanical programs in the country, with wild edible infusions in a number of spirits.

Lipow at Foraged Feast says the restaurants he supplies — Basilico, Battello, Faubourg, Razza, The Ryland Inn and many other heralded eateries — have caught on to the appeal of foraged goods and chefs are getting creative with their use of them.

“The magnolia blossoms, I have chefs excited that they’re finally here again and they’re going to pickle, preserve or candy them,” he says. “It’s an amazing ingredient and it’s available for three weeks of the year. And there are a whole bunch of those. It’s pretty exciting to have built out these extra markets.” 

Some chefs are even getting into foraging themselves, like Capella.

“There are a couple spots I know that always grow,” he says. “But since I’ve been working with Dan [Lipow], he feels comfortable taking me, but I’m not going to go to his spot and clean him out.”

What can you forage in New Jersey? (And why would you?)

In short, a lot. You can find hundreds of wild edibles in New Jersey, many of which may be growing in your backyard. Many, in fact, that you may have dismissed as weeds or that you may have overlooked even though they’re literally growing on trees.

“Dandelion greens … are prime right now,” says Debbie Naha-Koretzky, a Rutgers Master Gardener, foraging instructor and author. “[Eastern] Redbud trees are putting out their blossoms. It’s a native tree, and they’re out there in the wild. People also plant them, and they get these really pretty pink blossoms, and they’re just starting to come out.” 

Too, there are stinging nettles (boil them to get rid of their stingers), white pine needles, Japanese knotweed (an invasive species, yet delicious), sumac, wild onions, garlic mustard… the list goes on and on.

And it really can be in your backyard. (Word to the wise: among other precautions, you should only forage on your land or the land of those you know because 1) it’s illegal to trespass on others’ property and to forage in most state and federal parks, and 2) You know what potentially nasty amendments like fertilizer were put on the land.)

“I could walk around any backyard and find something to eat, probably 10 things,” Lipow says. “And that’s not even including mushrooms, just green stuff around. There’s just a ton that’s going to have edible components and better flavor and higher nutritional values.”

Lipow also grows mushrooms on logs on his property — right now, with all the recent rain, he says his log-grown shiitake mushrooms are booming.

“When people say, ‘Are those mushrooms organic,’ I say, ‘No, they’re beyond organic,’” he says.

Indeed, the merits of wild food extend beyond the novelty and taste. Naha-Koretzky, a nutritionist in addition to a forager, says wild food tends to be loaded with more nutrients and antioxidants than commercially grown food. 

And, in fact, the taste and nutrition of wild foods has roots in biology, Manganaro says. Modern diners are coming around to its characteristics.

“The first greens of the spring are pretty bitter. You have to block the world out to understand that. If you were surviving off of preserves all winter — surviving off of pickled items and smoked meats — these greens, you get them in you and they revitalize you and clean you out almost, and they’re some of the most healthy greens you can have in you all year,” he says. “It was a challenge at first because bitter is a lost art. People have come to appreciate the bitterness.”

How to forage in New Jersey

First, an important disclaimer: In addition to the precautions you should take about where to forage, you shouldn’t just eat anything you see on the ground. That may seem obvious to smart folks like you, but let’s just say not everyone is the sharpest wild onion in the pasture.

“You want to be 101% sure of your identification of any plant before you eat it,” Naha-Koretzky says. “I always tell people check multiple sources, don’t take one person’s word for it, don’t take one book or one website’s word for it. Make sure you’re really comfortable with knowing the plant before eating it. You know a dandelion and you want to be as sure about other things as well.”

To get multiple sources of information, turn to books and experts, not apps: “I really do not trust the apps. I see them fail so badly so many times, and that’s not good,” Lipow says.

Also, in your training, read multiple books or trusted university resources. There’s also likely to be workshops or local foraging groups to join.

“Joining a mycological society or native plant society is a nice way to get a lot of information and meet a lot of different people,” Lipow says. “I had a few people that I was tight with when I started who I had met and we would share our picks and question each other and say, ‘What do you think, what is this?’ and let them go at it. If they came to the same conclusion, that was really nice.”

Naha-Koretzky is teaching a foraging class at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, on April 26; she’s been teaching classes there for three years.

“They’ve been very well received and they sell out for us every time,” says Timothy Gould, director of continuing education at Longwood Gardens. “We see a real mix coming out for these classes. It’s almost entirely people that are personally interested in the topic, but it’s all ages from all different backgrounds coming out and just learning a little more about something they maybe haven’t tried but are interested in going deeper with.”

There are also kids foraging events in Wall Township throughout the summer and a foraging workshop and dinner at Cherry Grove Farm in Lawrenceville. Check with your local parks or nature center, too — Morris County typically holds foraging classes — as these events have become popular in recent years.

Matt Cortina is a food reporter with NorthJersey.com/The Record. Reach him at [email protected].