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At the urging of a friend, she’d brought a few sprigs of anise hyssop from her meadow to the reception desk, explaining, somewhat apologetically, that she would be dining there later with friends and wondered if the chef could do anything with the plants. Chef de cuisine Eddy Leroux, who admitted he knew nothing about the herb, was intrigued by the challenge.

“He made us some amazing dishes with it,” Wong recalled. When she thanked the chef after the meal, he asked her, “What else do you have in your meadow?” 225 different plants, she told him. “Bring me everything!” he replied. “I will pay you.” She agreed—with a catch. She didn’t want payment: “I just want recipes!”

Thus began a collaboration that continues to this day. She would bring him plants, they would experiment together, and he kept a giant dossier documenting their discoveries. In 2012, they published a collection of their best in a cookbook, “Foraged Flavor.”

Now, through her small business Meadows and More, Wong supplies a number of restaurants, including Korean, Japanese, and Nordic, and online grocery retailer FreshDirect. For those chefs, part of the buzz surrounding foraged ingredients is due to their being hyperlocal, seasonal, and only available for a short window of time. “When something is in season and at its peak, it has so much more freshness, flavor, and realness than when it’s been shipped and warehoused,” Wong said. “A lot of the hot-house-grown stuff you get now is so devoid of flavor—it just all tastes the same, like water.”

The flavor complexities of wild foods are addictive, she said, but also hard to describe. There’s not a single flavor note—“it’s more like music, or wine. The flavor will start with one thing and then trail to something else.”

A Prescription for Sustainability

One day, to describe what she does for her meadow, and now for others who hire her business for consultations, Wong made up the term “meadow doctor.” Unlike a gardener or regenerative farmer, she’s not involved in the creation of the wild meadow. “The doctor doesn’t create the patient,” she said. She’ll make a diagnosis—“What are the plants in here, how’s everybody getting along, do we have a nice gut biome?”—and prescribe some lifestyle changes if necessary.

Going from a corporate lawyer to a meadow doctor may seem like a big shift, but Wong says the two jobs are not that different. “For one thing, you have all these categories in Latin!” she said with a laugh. “You’ve got to pay attention to detail.” She worked in developing markets, “and if you want something to take hold, you need to have structure.”

Part of the structure she offers is her “sustainability code,” which classifies plants according to their status as native or non-native, specialized or generalized. Slow-growing and specialized plants like trillium shouldn’t be picked at all, while a fast-growing invasive like garlic mustard can be picked at will.

For Wong, foraging offers endless opportunities for education, experimentation, and expansion. The healthier the meadows, the more nutritious and flavorful the plants, and the more people will delight in discovering them. •

LANGDON COOK