If you visit a high-end restaurant in Ireland, you will likely see the word “foraged” written somewhere on the menu. I’ve always wondered: who exactly is doing the foraging? In a busy restaurant kitchen, you can’t just drop everything to forage for wild garlic or seaweed. Some chefs make the time, but not most. To regularly feature foraged foods requires a consistent supplier.

Edward Blain and Avery McGuire own and operate Thalli Foods: a small-scale foraging business in rural Co Clare. Before lockdown hit, approximately 90% of their business was supplying food service operations with foraged foods.

Making a connection

You may think the Burren region of Clare would be largely devoid of edible plants, but on a quick ramble over the jagged rocks at Lough Bunny, we stumble (in my case, literally) upon wild thyme, hazelnuts and a staggering amount of sloes – not bad for plants growing out of rocks.

As we walk, Edward explains the intricacies involved in making a life from foraging. He says patience is important.

“The world is not a machine,” Edward says. “And humans aren’t machines, either. We’re perfectly connected organisms. [To forage] involves feeling that connection and taking the cues from nature – and while nature is all about connectivity, it doesn’t necessarily understand the calendar year.”

“We record everything we harvest so we can look back the following year and get a rough idea of when we were picking something,” Avery adds. “And we have to stop living by that calendar, because nature decides when things are going to grow. We think, ‘We’ll harvest chanterelles today, because we were harvesting this day last year’. Then, it’s like – where are all the mushrooms?”

Blazing the trail

Becoming a forager isn’t usually on the list of potential careers while doing your Leaving Cert. Avery says, as a student in the US (she is originally from upstate New York), she knew she wanted to work in food – just not in the traditional sense. After graduating with a degree in anthropology, she was granted an internship at the Nordic Food Lab in Copenhagen.

“I more specifically wanted to change our food system, but I didn’t know how,” she says. “I didn’t want to be a chef, farmer or dietician. Within my first week [at the Nordic Food Lab], I was given a project that had been started but not finished: I had to create a gastronomic herbarium. My predecessor had collected edible plant species that she had pressed, and we wrote accompanying tasting notes for chefs (rather than the botanical notes you’d typically find). That was my introduction to wild foods.”

“I became fascinated by it,” she continues. “At the food lab, we were always experimenting. I became in charge of harvesting for other projects. We gathered elderberries for elderberry balsamic vinegar and I remember someone trying to make a coffee substitute with a chenopodium species, so we’d go out and find it – to take these plants back and experiment was so inspiring.”

While Avery was honing her craft in Copenhagen, Edward was in his native Kent, England, learning under foraging expert Miles Irving. Irving’s business, Forager, specialises in supplying foraged foods; mainly for food service. When Edward joined the team at Forager, he felt his true education was just beginning.

“I was very interested in food and the land and being able to get what you need from right around you,” he says. “It was just good fortune I heard of this business. I thought, ‘I want to go and pick wild plants for a living’. I didn’t realise how much of an education it was going to be. Suddenly, after three weeks working for Miles, I felt I’d learned more than what I learned in about five years of studying. And, what’s more, I was learning things I’d be passing on to my children and grandchildren.”

Finding their place

While in Copenhagen, Avery also learned about Miles Irving. She moved to England, joined his team and continued her wild foods education under his tutelage.

As we walk along the rocks, Avery is not just minding her footing – she is also carrying their first-born daughter, Florence, in a sling.

It’s almost fortuitous how they welcomed their first child when lockdown had closed most food service operations. While it provided some much-needed down time with their newborn, they were also able to continue to forage and expand their market reach.

Wild alternatives

Through platforms like Neighbourfood and stockists at The Urban Co-op in Limerick, The Real Olive Co. in Cork and The Aloe Tree in Ennistymon, they kept their business going through the most difficult weeks of the pandemic. They have been pleased with the public’s reception of their ingredients and hope to expand with the every-day customer in mind. Avery says their clientele is as varied as their product range.

“Our demographic is surprisingly diverse. Lots of older customers get excited about the seaweed, because it’s a food from their past. I was quite surprised at how many people are excited to try something new that [might be] a bit obscure. We also have customers from different cultural backgrounds [who would have eaten these foods in their home countries].”

The product line features both fresh and preserved foraged foods (including seaweeds, krauts, infused vinegars, dried mushrooms and herb blends) and some interesting alternatives to imported products. I’m itching to try their nettle powder – an earthy, green substance that could easily be mistaken for expensive Japanese matcha tea. I currently use their dried wild marjoram; the perfect, locally sourced substitute for oregano.

Legitimately delicious

As a consumer, it’s fun to try new-to-you products and support local producers, but it’s equally important to trust the foods you consume have been sourced safely.

Abiding by European law, when foraging for human consumption, means you can’t sell anything which hasn’t been eaten before – what’s more, there needs to be a written record of the plant being used for consumption prior to 1992. While Avery and Edward respect this law, they say foraging traditions haven’t always been written.

“A lot of food tradition has been passed down orally,” Edward says. “For example, in Finland they found sea kale, which is an esteemed vegetable, didn’t have any written documentation, so they couldn’t sell it there.

“I respect where the law is coming from, you don’t want to be selling something that has a specific or detailed preparation for safe consumption,” he continues. “But sea kale? You’re not going to do anybody any harm by selling that.”

With extensive training in wild foods and their many purposes, Avery and Edward not only understand and abide by food safety laws; they have earned the trust and respect of some of Ireland’s most creative chefs.

“We feel part of the Irish food culture, but we’re not pioneers – others have been doing this since before we got here,” Edward says. “We want these foods to be part of the common culture. Some chefs are really good at treating our ingredients like real food [as opposed to garnish or flavouring]. Chefs Enda McEvoy and JP McMahon, for example, have championed our products and shown such respect for them. They really get the high level of skill that goes into foraging.”

For further information, contact thallifoods@gmail.com