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If you dine at restaurants where clever young chefs play with contemporary fare, you might have noticed an item cropping up on menus in the past couple of years: It is called the ramp, or ramps, in the plural form.
Also known as wild onion, wild garlic, ramson or wood leek, this plant — Allium tricoccumto botanists — is a cousin of garlic. Its pleasantly pungent flavor tips off its lineage.
Found in rain-blessed, rich-soiled forests from Vermont to Oregon, plus the Southern Appalachians of the Southeast, ramps are a harbinger of springtime.
The name is a variation of the English word "ramson," a moniker for the European bear leek. Ramps enjoy wooded, shady areas, growing close to the surface in bunches with widespread roots. They have broad, bright green leaves, a small white bulb and reddish shoots.
A foraged crop, like wild mushrooms such as morels, their short harvest window runs from about mid-April through May. Chefs prize them.
"I look forward to ramp season every year," says Aniedra Nichols, executive chef at Elway's in Cherry Creek, who uses the plants in vinaigrettes, pestos and other creations. "They're so versatile. I like that they're a light blend of onion and garlic. They're beautiful and just interesting."
Ramps, which resemble scallions, appear on the warm-weather menus of Paul Reilly, ( Beast + Bottle in the Uptown neighborhood), and those of Steve Redzikowski ( Oak at Fourteenth in Boulder; Acorn in Denver.)
Ditto for The Kitchen Denver, Session Kitchenand Coohills in LoDo, where Tom Coohill's current menu includes a dish of Alaskan halibut with grilled ramps, fava beans and asparagus broth. At Panzano, Elise Wiggins recently offered a special of tagliatelle pasta tossed with ramps, pepperoncini, Parmesan, rocket greens and olive oil.
Colorado's woodlands aren't conducive to ramps, and they're not common in grocery stores. But you can find them, depending on availability, in markets such as Whole Foods and Marczyk Fine Foods. (Best to call ahead and ask.)
As a boy in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, I hunted ramps in late spring. I was introduced to them by a good friend of mine, whose grandfather, a carpenter and woodsman named Molt Shuford, taught him the pleasures of packing in a Coleman stove, a carton of eggs and slab of bacon to a ramp patch. The first task was filling a burlap bag with the plants. Then came the reward: scrambled eggs and ramps.
Ramp festivals abound in that neck of the woods, celebrating the plant's legacy and lore, including its use among Indians and early settlers as a medicinal tonic. Folks of a certain age can recall how kids would sometimes come to school reeking of raw ramps: The olfactory offenders had downed them by the dozen in order to be sent home from class.
William Porter: 303-954-1877, wporter@denverpost.com or twitter.com/williamporterdp
Restaurants ramp it up: Where to find ramps in Denver
Ramps are appearing on a growing number of restaurants, as chefs have discovered their garlicky goodness and fresh-foraged, seasonal cachet. Here are a few Front Range restaurants where ramps pop up on warm-weather menus.
Beast + Bottle
719 E 17th Ave., 303-623-3223
Coohills
1400 Wewatta St., 303-623-5700
Elway's Cherry Creek
2500 E. 1st Ave. 303-399-5353
The Kitchen Denver
1530 16th St., 303-623-3127
Panzano
909 17th St., 303-296-3525
Session Kitchen
1518 S. Pearl St., 720-763-3387
Oak at Fourteenth
1400 Pearl St., Boulder
303-444-3622
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