Ramps season comes but once a year, and it is fleeting. Lasting maybe a month at most, it’s a beautiful time: spring is just starting, trees are budding and the markets are starting to fill up with seasonal produce.
The ramp is one of the first spring vegetables to appear at Farmer’s Markets. It’s special for many reasons, but mostly because it is foraged, not farmed. Tasting like mild garlic and leeks, a ramp is a spring onion like vegetable that grows along rivers and in woods in the Hudson Valley and beyond. Finding them is a lucky thing.
Ramps are also extremely delicious, and each spring when they arrive chefs use them in creative dishes and foodies buy as many as they can. Ramps from the southeast have made their way onto menus already, but there haven’t yet been sightings of local ramps for sale. It could happen any day now.
And while we wait in anticipation, here’s something to get excited about: Ramp Fest Hudson.
Now in it’s third year, the fest is taking place on May 3 at the Basilica in Hudson, N.Y. This celebration of all things ramp brings chefs from NYC and the Hudson Valley together for a ramp blow-out. For just $30 you can eat ramps for four hours.
Here are the chefs and restaurants at this year’s Ramp Fest (with more to come):
- Another Fork in the Road – Chef Jamie Parry
- Ca’ Mea – Chef Timothy Storrs
- The Farm on Adderley – Chef Tom Kearney
- Fresh Company – Chef Shelley Boris
- Gigi – Chef Wilson Costa
- The Heath and Gallow Green at The McKittrick Hotel – Chef R.L. King
- Helsinki Hudson – Chef Hugh Horner
- John Andrews Farmhouse – Chef John Andrews
- Market St –Chef Gianni Scappin
- Panzur – Chef Rei Peraza
- Route 7 Grill – Christophe Jalbert
- Speedy Romeo – Chef Justin Bazdarich
- Swoon – Chef Jeff Gimmel
- Bonfiglio & Bread
- Lucas Confectionery
