Each dish was carefully paired with organic wines courtesy of Medlock Ames, a local winery in nearby Bell Mountain.

Medlock Ames Wine was served at the Wild Foods Dinner

The dishes leading up to the main course included everything from smoked mackerel escabeche with grilled octopus, seared sea scallops and watercress to house-made ricotta tortellini.

House-made ricotta tortellini with Sierra porcini, wild pecans and honey

The two main courses were certainly worth the price of admission: local king salmon with nettle and huitlacoche dumplings, fried seabeans and fresh corn polenta, followed by roasted venison with fiddlehead fern, elderberry mustard, morels and Douglas fir jus.

Vension, also known as deer, is very thin and should never be overcooked, Stewart said. If you do, it turns into jerky. Photo: Sara Bloomberg

Dinner wouldn’t be complete without Stewart’s famous candy cap mushroom S’mores with roasted white chocolate.

Candy cap mushroom S'mores with roasted white chocolate. Photo: Sara Bloomberg — Candy cap mushroom S'mores with roasted white chocolate.
Photo: Sara Bloomberg

All in all, the dinner was a huge success and Stewart looks forward to many more wild food events.

This certainly wasn't Stewart's first time gathering food in the wilderness.

His love of wild foods began when he was only 9 years old growing up on Whidbey Island, 30 miles north of Seattle. He, his father and grandfather would find clams, mussel and wild oysters everywhere.

“I remember at super low tides we would pick Dungeness crab out of knee-deep water” he recalled.

It wasn’t just seafood. Stewart would pick wild blackberries, filling up 5 gallon buckets to bring to his grandmother who made pies from the bounty.

Despite San Francisco’s rich culinary tradition, it isn’t quite as abundant in edible vegetation as Washington. Nowdays, he has to work a little harder to pursue food in the wild, although as Stewart says, “It’s all worth it.”

connie greenconnie green

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