We’re seated in a separate back room at a long shiplap table. I sip a bloody Mary and notice the old farm decor: on the wall hang horseshoes of various sizes, a washboard, a 1974 race horse calendar, and a large tilling wheel. In the corner are little painted porcelain dolls littering the shelf of an old oak baker’s rack.
The small paper menu contains a short list of the usual breakfast items, including their “famous” pancakes. What caught my attention, however, was the seasonal side of the menu. In particular the eggs benedict with wild mountain ramp hollandaise.
“What the hell are mountain ramps?,” I thought.
After I relay my confusion to our young waitress, she explains that before sunrise, the women forage the mountains to harvest the ramps. She also emphasizes that they are a local favorite and go quickly. I still have no clear idea of what they are, but I can’t let this intrepid woman’s efforts go to waste. This is clearly to be my breakfast–as compliment to my second bloody Mary, of course.
The eggs benedict comes served over fresh baked bread, and to say I was smitten would be an understatement. While everyone raves about the pancakes, I couldn’t care less. This first experience of fresh, wild foraged food is incomparable. The ramps taste like garlic, shallots, mesquite smoke, bok choy—all of these flavor profiles rolled into one. Yet still, this doesn’t quite capture the essence of what some call “wild leeks.”
If you’ve never had a meal alter the course of your life then I implore you, as strongly as possible, to seek out such an experience. Highly recommended. 11/10 stars.
Now satisfied and tipsy, we continue our weekend of testosterone driven debauchery. We play billiards and weird German drinking games and talk all sorts of trash–but the ramps never fall far from my mind. They’ve sparked something old in me; a reignited thirst I had tamped down. Like a serving of nostalgia, the memory of my father’s backcountry ways is rekindled in a simple bachelor party breakfast. I look out at the tall, lonely pines surrounding the lake and I feel a change in me. I wince a swig of bourbon and realize, rather abruptly, that I’ve stayed away from the forest for far too long…
While I wait to board a plane back home to Dallas, I resign myself to a dream. Someday, I will return to the farm where table fare is plucked from dark Appalachian earth. I will learn the ways of the women who forage mountains in blue morning mist; and I will eat at their table. Perhaps this time, I’ll even try the pancakes–but I doubt it.
I also wonder if ramps grow in Texas–but I know they don’t. It’s too flat and dry. However, they’ve made a deep impression: like an arrow shot from a gut string, I’m thrust towards a life of self-reliance. A lifestyle that, in large part, was stolen from me by twists of fate. I need to learn as much as I can, as quickly as possible.
Naturally, I start with Netflix.
On an episode of MeatEater, they cook up a mess of morel mushrooms (which are new to me at this time) and the show’s host, Steven Rinella, says something to the effect of, “Man, you’d never think these little brainy lookin’ things could be so darn robust and flavorful. Like beef and nuts…” and I’m struck. Now I need to find them. A quick google search confirms that Texas indeed has morels. Damn good morels too–and that’s all I need to hear.
While I sit here sipping coffee and struggle to end this story, I resign myself to a dream. While fly fishing, I stumble upon a morel honey hole. When I look up from excited picking, my eyes barely catch the green and lavender stalks of mountain ramps protruding from dark, brown earth. I pull a stringer of trout from the water, retrieve my fire kit, melt some butter in a pan over the embers, and savor a meal older than the pines that loom above me. I listen to the music of the forest. As the embers glow red, the moon rises and casts its long white finger over the river: reminding me of a time back in old Appalachia. Naturally, I think of my father–and find solace in knowing that apples really don’t fall that far from the tree.
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Best regards.
D.G.
