H.L. Harbett: When fresh isn’t best
Regarding the Jan. 9 Focus article “Chef likes his mushrooms on the wild side”: I learned that foraged mushrooms can be toxic or even fatal, and in North Carolina serving them is against state regulations.
The article explained that when inspectors visit the restaurant, the mushrooms are removed so that points are not deducted from the restaurant’s rating. All this information was in the article, and I kept wondering what I was missing, what part of violating state regulations doesn’t this man get?
Maybe I was supposed to be enchanted at the notion of eating 90 percent locally sourced food, but I kept thinking about being the unlucky one who got one of the misidentified mushrooms.
H.L. Harbett
Durham
This story was originally published January 17, 2016 at 1:00 PM with the headline "H.L. Harbett: When fresh isn’t best."