Profiles in Foraging

Patterson & Redzepi Go A-Foraging in Food & Wine

Redzepi and Patterson: all laughs.
Redzepi and Patterson: all laughs.

The January issue of Food and Wine is now online and with it comes a giant homage to the creative lives of Daniel Patterson (whose latest restaurant, Haven, will open any day now in Oakland) and Danish wonderchef René Redzepi. The dynamic duo, who became close friends at a chefs-only conference focusing on raw food, spent a Bay Area weekend together foraging, cooking, and hitting up the Ferry Building. After an afternoon scouring a two-square-meter plot of farmland in the hills of Marin County, they head home to “investigate the process of inventing new dishes from start to finish” while they “try to better understand their own creative processes.”

Redzepi and Patterson: all laughs.

Also, they cook some stuff! Patterson and Redzepi ambitiously create over 20 elaborate dishes out of those two square meters, like eggs garnished with rosemary flowers and corn meal cakes with brown-butter-sage-lemon sauce. But in the end Patterson, always the champion of cooking locally, stresses the importance of noticing one’s surroundings: “Look around you and use what’s there. It’s not about re-creating what we’re doing in this one tiny little place. Everywhere you go, you’ll find something different.”

The Creative Life of Chefs René Redzepi and Daniel Patterson, [Food & Wine]
Earlier: Watch Daniel Patterson Make Chilled Eggplant Soup
Daniel Patterson Cradles a Sloth, Almost Dies From Eating a Water Lily Out of the Amazon

Patterson & Redzepi Go A-Foraging in Food & Wine