Into the Wild
If the creator of the hit HBO series The White Lotus ever felt the need to revisit Hawai‘i — the location of the first season — forager, hunter and chef Yuda Abitbol could provide serious inspo.
Back in 2011, while hanging out with friends on the outskirts of Waikīkī, a girl encouraged Abitbol to drink a tea brewed from the large, yellow flowers of the Angel Trumpet plant. He nearly died. “I was the only one stupid enough to drink the tea,” he says. Though Abitbol can’t say for sure, he suspects the poisoning was intentional. Like many characters in The White Lotus, there is a murkiness and moral ambiguity that floats in the background of that evening. The night changed his life.
After being released from the hospital, Abitbol became highly attuned to plants — memorizing the shape of leaves, minuscule differences in color, the seasons and locations of fruit trees in backyards, and those growing wild in the mountains and around streams. Riding his bicycle around urban neighborhoods in Honolulu, he would barter fruits picked on mountain hikes for backyard avocados and mangos.
Still in his early twenties and foraging, Abitbol started exploring the other end of the food chain and began working in restaurants. “I was rightly fired from my first kitchen job after four months,” he says. “I appreciate it now — what I would get in trouble for helped me do better in other kitchens.” As Abitbol continued to work in various positions, moving from pantry cook to grill — one of the toughest stations in a working kitchen — he would think about the disconnect between his daily work of cutting product out of paper and plastic bags, while nearby forests, streams, and the ocean were abundant with fruit and wildlife.
The thought stayed with him, and after working construction projects on Kaua‘i and starting a small ‘ulu, goat and kiawe farm in Waimānalo with friends in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, Abitbol fine-tuned his hunting and gathering skills. A natural storyteller, he began sharing his learnings on Instagram just as the pandemic heightened the public’s desire to better understand their own connections to food. Soon he was getting DMs with requests for foraging hikes and private dinners.
A six-course dinner foraged from land and sea is ever-evolving, dictated by chance and seasonality.
A dinner reservation with Follows The Wai (Abitbol’s platform) starts with a request for a short paragraph to “tell me about yourself.” Abitbol says he does this to ensure the chef and guests are in sync.
“If I’m going out and kill an animal” — a look at his Instagram feed shows he’s able to hunt with bow and arrow (among his many skills), hike the mountains for wild cinnamon, and gather salt from tide pools — he wants it to be appreciated from a place of deep gratitude for the plants and animals that contributed to the dinner. “If you [just] want a ribeye steak and sushi dinner cooked by a private chef, I’m not your guy,” says Abitbol. In the same sense, he says, he’s not the person who posts a beautiful basket full of lemons and says, “I’m off to make some jam.”
To put guests in the mindset of experiencing food with all their senses, his dinners start with a tasting of salt gathered at a local tide pool, scents of wild peppercorn and maybe the burning of allspice before the meal begins.
A six-course dinner foraged from land and sea is ever-evolving, dictated by chance and seasonality. A dinner might start with an aku crudo with starfruit and preserved Meyer lemon and include a venison tartare, ‘ulu gnocchi and Kaua‘i shrimp bouillabaisse. About 80% of the meal is wild-sourced and foraged.
His wild foraging classes include a Rainforest Foraging experience and a Wild Food and Mushroom Walk. Abitbol teaches attendees how to harvest responsibly and hopes that by sharing the experience of gathering your own food, people will have a deeper appreciation for the edible, natural world.
Abitbol says he doesn’t take himself too seriously and likes to share funny stories, mishaps and bloopers with his dinner guests and students.
For the squeamish who prefer their food wrapped and neatly presented, join Abitbol’s more than 67,000 followers on Instagram (@followsthewai) to vicariously explore the edible world — that, like a good episode of The White Lotus, has multiple layers lurking beneath the surface.
Abitbol’s passion for ingredients emerged from working at stations in busy kitchens and the disconnect between cutting products out of paper and plastic bags versus sourcing them from nearby forests and streams. Abitbol sought the latter.
(All photos courtesy Yuda Abitbol.)