The Foraging Trend Never Told the Whole Story | Eater

"When it surged to the forefront in 2010 as the “World’s Best Restaurant,” Noma popularized the iconic image of the foraging chef—tousled, kneeling in a mossy pine forest, plucking wild herbs and even ants—and helped reel diners into a romanticized link between foraging and local tradition. I saw how that aesthetic and Redzepi’s approach were quickly fetishized, spawning a generation of chefs and “I foraged with Rene Redzepi” narratives, and how small-scale foraging morphed into commercialized “wild-washing.” Noma also radically changed Denmark’s dining scene by bringing money, tourism, and skilled labor, but even as it relocated in 2017 and moved past a strict foraging focus, its influence helped define the Nordic region for years and had real, sometimes negative, ripple effects on the broader food system." - Nick Curtin