Eat Your Neighbor's Produce Here! Forage, Silverlake.

Forage

3823 W Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026

(323) 663-6885

This, from Forage's website,

Your urban harvests plus food from farms and ranches make our dishes. We invite you to join us, not just as our guests, but to collaborate with us. We're asking you to forage fruits and vegetables for us! Bring us limes from your backyard tree, or peas you're growing in your garden. We'll have a tasting in the kitchen, find out how you're growing them, and then figure out how best we can use them. Let Forage be a small example of how victory gardens and small farms aren't some pipe dream or privilege, but that it's something we all deserve and can have in our daily life. We hope you will not only drop by for food, but join us.

Forage definitely feels like community, from the people eating at tables spilling out onto the sidewalk and into the parking lot, to the side wall chalkboard mentioning "Lily & John's Lemons", or "Juanita's Beets" included in the daily menu, to the inclusiveness of vegetarian and vegan choices alongside offerings for their more carnivorous customers and Blue Bottle Coffee for sale on the counter.  The concept is simple.  Forage encourages people from the neighborhood to bring in the surplus from their harvests or the overabundance from their citrus trees to be used in the dishes tempting you from behind the glass in this almost deli-style cafe. Obviously, the generosity of the neighborhood is supplemented by organic farms, trips to the farmer's market (Silverlake Farmer's Market, I would hope) and visits from butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers.

 

On offer the late winter day I visited was Pig's Head Terrine, and don't think I wasn't tempted.

A beautiful farro salad with pine nuts, raisins, cavalo nero (black kale), citrus, rosemary and so on.  This made it into my lunch.

Above see Sierra Gold potatoes, and an open faced chicken salad sandwich with green apples (on which I almost caved).

Foraged citrus-beet salad to the left...

and roasted market vegetables to the right (went in my belly).

From the butcher came cage-free, all natural grains, hormone and steroid free spit-roasted Jidori chicken. 

On my car seat, luncheon bounty.  Quarter Jidori chicken, farro salad and roasted market vegetables.  Just under $8 for a beautiful lunch that felt like a treat.  Every bite was delicious.  

I passed on the sweets, but treats for the sweet-tooth inclined were well represented.  A coffee cake above and cranberry bar below.

Heavenly toasty meringues bigger than my head.

And all kinds of cookies.


Forage accepts foraged and harvested items from the community on Sundays between 3 and 5 PM.  Stop by with your goods, their chefs will have a gander and a nibble, and decide if they can be included in the weekly menu.  Also, the Forage website lists "Forage Calls".  These are seasonal items of which Forage is in need of to complete their menu. Right now they are seeking lavender, lemons, exotic citrus and lime leaves. Take a peek yourself and see if you have anything to offer!


Not only will I be visiting again, I plan to swing by this afternoon to pick up some goodies for tomorrow's in flight picnic.  Coming at you, Forage!