Rachel’s Foraging Dinner
In a backyard garden limned with grape vines, on a quiet street in downtown Bar Harbor, with hand-typed menus and placemats made of giant burdock leaves, Rachel Alexandrou put on a beautiful and intimate foraging dinner with gathered ingredients from all over the Maine coast. Oysters, sea lovage, blueberries, chanterelles, nettles, green crabs, milkweed, acorns, bayberry, and black trumpet mushrooms amongst others. Some courses were even served in the repurposed remnants of wild foods—like a beach rose panna cotta set in scrubbed out mussel shells. Dolmas filled with wild rice, cattails deep-fried corn dog style, knotweed chutney, and grilled wild pollack stuffed with sweet fern to name just a few courses from Rachel’s dinner.
