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Into the Woods
Many chefs spend their lives locked in windowless kitchens. But not Michael Chang and Caroline Singer of Carmel’s Foray restaurant, who fell in love while foraging together in Colorado. “Caroline got me into hiking when we first started dating,” Chang says. “Then as a chef, once I was out in the woods with her, I realized we could be finding all this other cool stuff.”
The chef husband and sommelier wife moved to Carmel in 2017 and soon started throwing private dinner parties. In 2022, they opened their fine dining restaurant, which quickly became one of the hottest spots in town. “This is the best area to have a restaurant in the country,” Chang says. “You can have fresh produce year-round. You have amazing fish right here in the bay. The hills are filled with mushrooms in the rainy season and greens in the dry season.” Those mushrooms are key to the restaurant’s identity; in the fungi-hunting world, “foray” literally means a foraging expedition through the woods.
The whole experience is wild at Foray, bringing that local bounty into the comfort of the dining room. When it starts raining in the fall, Chang and Singer head for the hills at least one full day a week. They pull on waterproof clothing, lace up hiking boots, and sometimes switch on headlamps when the mornings grow dark. As soon as the gear comes out, their dog starts whining with excitement, knowing adventure awaits. He often wears a vest and a beeper, “like a dog pager,” and paw covers to protect against foxtails.
Allow us to introduce Falco, one of the most important personalities on staff at Foray. Falco is a Lagotto Romagnolo, a curly-haired breed famed for truffle hunting in Italy. Now the sophisticated age of 6, he sniffed out his first truffle at only 9 weeks old. Don’t let his teddy bear looks deceive you—he takes his job quite seriously. Falco has twice placed top five in the Joriad, the only truffle hunting competition in North America. And now, he’s busy hunting down the wild mushrooms that will star on your dinner menu this season.
It’s a faux pas to ask a forager for their secret spots, so suffice it to say, we’re somewhere off the beaten track in Carmel Valley or Pebble Beach. Following Falco off the trail and into the woods, he trots through the mud and around poison oak. It’s hard work. He breathes heavily to parse all of the fresh aromas, and digs gently through leaves and topsoil to locate mushrooms and the occasional truffle. Chang and Singer wear big mesh bags over their shoulders, which they fill up with treasures to carry back to the restaurant.
On the Peninsula, Falco mostly hunts for mushrooms. They always hope to find hills filled with giant golden chanterelles—some ruffled out big enough to fill your palms, and firm and meaty porcini, with their thick stems and brown caps. A little more rare, and a special treat of the area, they’re also excited to spy slender candy caps, dark red in color with a fragrant maple aroma. And along the journey, they gather herbs, greens, and flowers, including fresh spearmint for truffles, wild bay laurel for stock, and bright blue bachelor buttons to scatter over salads.
Falco also travels all the way up to Oregon to track down prized truffles, often valued at hundreds of dollars per pound. Occasionally, he’ll find one closer to home in California, but most thrive in the rain of the Pacific Northwest. That may change in years to come. Chang and Singer are friends with Dr. Charles Lefevre of New World Truffieres, a scientist who’s been inoculating trees with the fungus on orchards and vineyards across California. Including at Jackson Family Wines, as in Kendall-Jackson, which harvested its first crop of truffles in 2017. The dream is that chefs won’t have to rely on expensive wild truffles from France and Italy, and instead we might get to feast on more cultivated truffles from our own terroir in California.
On Foray’s autumn menu, wild foods feature in many dishes. Woodsy chanterelles pair well with roast chicken, which Michael debones and rolls up into a torchon, wrapping the mushrooms under the skin to keep everything crispy and juicy. He slices porcini into rounds as thick as scallops, roasts them until golden brown, and tops them with an endive salad for a vegan appetizer. The candy caps naturally sweeten an old-fashioned cocktail, as well as infuse a brioche bread pudding, which he can never take off the menu—the fans would revolt. The luxurious truffles get the star treatment on a simple risotto. “We’ll shave an obscene amount of truffle on top,” Chang says. “I always tell the servers, ‘Don’t leave the customer wanting more.’”
Photos by Glen McDowell
What’s the best wine to go with all these wild flavors? Singer is so glad you asked. Of course, it’s fitting to reach for a pinot noir from Oregon or Washington, one that leans less fruit-forward and more big and bold. She recommends dry and earthy reds with good structure, to chase the flavor of mushrooms gathered from the forest floor. Although that crispy chicken could call for a rich Chardonnay, like one from the local Rhys Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
As reward for his services, Falco—who has a rather refined palate for a dog—gets tossed something a little more delectable than your average biscuit. “When we’re truffle hunting, if we want to keep him motivated, we have to have a high-value treat,” Chang says. “It’s usually a freshly shucked English pea. But he’ll also do crab or bacon.” <img src="https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6457f19f1c1e1601e2c9c3f6/6487a9355b63a6818c705cea_CC-Icon--20.svg"alt="CC" style="display: inline-block; max-width: 100%; min-width: 20px; width: 12px; height: 12px;">
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Becky Duffett is a food writer living and eating in San Francisco. She was the deputy editor at Eater SF, and her work has appeared in Bon Appétit, EatingWell, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Eater SF, and Edible SF. Follow her on Instagram at @beckyduffett.