Morel Majority: Terrace View's Jonathan Olson Forages for Mushrooms

By Robin Wheeler Wed., Apr. 27 2011 at 12:00 PM

Categories: Education, In the Kitchen, Restaurant News & Reviews

Robin Wheeler

When Gut Check featured Jonathan Olson back in January 2010, he had just taken over the executive chef position at Erato. Much has changed since then: Olson left Erato, did a lot of traveling and restaurant exploration and recently took the helm at Jim Fiala's Terrace View.

What hasn't changed? Olson's foraging skills. Back then he told us, "I'm big on mountain biking. A lot of times I'll stop and look for mushrooms, do some foraging. That's my excuse because I'm not nearly as fast as I used to be and I need to take a few breaks now and then. This fall there were oyster mushrooms everywhere. I probably found forty pounds. There's mushrooms, stuff like watercress and fiddlehead ferns. Wild onions are all over. There's a lot of other mushrooms, too. Everyone knows morels, but there's also black trumpet mushrooms, pear puffballs which I had on the menu. Little puffball mushrooms."

It's a skill that's serving him well this spring as the morels boom. Olson has been posting his foraging successes on Twitter:

From Saturday.

Some of these morels are the size if baseballs & just found a patch of 40-50less than a minute ago via Echofon Favorite Retweet ReplyJonathan Olson
jonathanolson

Just found a box turtle! Totally recruited him to Team Mushroom Hunt. He'll be my eyes & ears(?) on the ground.less than a minute ago via Echofon Favorite Retweet ReplyJonathan Olson
jonathanolson