Sona's tomato salad with purslane
Step into the kitchen at Sona, and David Myers – the restaurant's visionary chef-owner – will proudly show you a rolling rack on which slightly odd-looking fruits and vegetables are carefully, even lovingly, arranged.
"They're foraged for us from small farms up and down the coast," he says. "These are farms too small to show up at the farmer's markets. They grow produce of extraordinary quality."
Myers is one of an increasing number of chefs discovering wonderful stuff growing on small plots and in the backyards of California – irregularly shaped produce with a fine, fresh flavor. Occasionally a passionate local gardener will show up at a restaurant's back door selling such booty. But increasingly it is professional foragers buying these crops from small farmers, then rushing them to chefs who prefer quality over quantity – among them, Jimmy Boyce at Studio in Laguna Beach's Montage Resort & Spa, Lee Hefter at Spago, Suzanne Goin at Lucques and A.O.C. and, of course, the queen of foraged produce, Alice Waters at Chez Panisse in Berkeley.
"Part of the fun," says Myers, "is that you never know what's coming in. You have to improvise. That's when cooking becomes like jazz."
– Merrill Shindler