How to celebrate Ramp Season in NYC

3 ways to enjoy this fleeting, costly weed

Listen to an audio recording of the following text:

Note: clicking the hyperlinked text will take you to other newsletters relevant to the text.

If you live in New York City, you may have noticed the emphatic, hand-drawn signs announcing, “RAMPS!” in front of bins containing bunches of long, semi-gloss leaves at every single stall at your local farmers market. You may have also been shoulder-checked away from these bins by a small white woman in her mid-sixties wearing round glasses, and then watched her rummage through every bunch—each indistinguishable from the last, select one with her choosy little hands, present a wad of $1 bills to the fatigued-looking person behind the bin, and then stuff this vegetation into her faded New Yorker tote. You may have wondered to yourself, “why are people losing their shit about this poisonous looking vegetation?”

This vegetation is (are?) called ramps, which are (is?) a seasonal, invasive weed indigenous to expensive wooded areas just outside of expensive Northeastern cities.

Also referred to as wild leeks or wild garlic to make them seem more exciting and culinarily useful than they actually are, ramps are foraged by members of polyamorous socialist communes and then sold by the most capitalist-tolerant members of these cults at farmers markets to upper middle class people who buy them because they are marketed by food blogs as an ephemeral luxury.

Ramps are only available from late March to early May, which conveniently happens to be when farmers market purveyors have run out of winter carrots, and no other produce is ready to harvest and sell. Beyond the instant dopamine hit of acquiring something that is scarce and expensive, you maybe wondering how best to use your new bundle of spicy weeds.

Known for having the highest profit margin for sellers and the lowest return on investment (ROI) for buyers of any vegetable known to mankind, ramps are a wonderful addition to all kinds of performative food situations.

Fridge bling

The simplest way to enjoy ramps is to place them on an eye-level shelf in your refrigerator next a few shiny $4 Meyer lemons prior to a dinner party, which you will host in early May for several of your tertiary friends who all happen to have Hamptons houses. While you’re pretending to sprinkle chopped Gristedes parsley onto the entirely prepared catered entree that you purchased from Citarella, ask that one chatty friend, who lingers with you in the kitchen whispering gossipy complaints about another guest, to open your fridge and hand you one of $4 Meyer lemons that you only buy only when you host dinner parties.

Your tea-spilling kitchen accomplice will notice the bunch of ramps in your refrigerator and realize that you are a refined, elegant foodie with rustic good taste and a sense of culinary adventure who would be an excellent addition to the 4th of July weekend they are hosting at their house just off of Further Lane in East Hampton.

The name drop

Food is a common topic of conversation when people are eating it at restaurants, particularly the kinds of restaurants that never have a reservation available after 5pm or before 10pm on a random Tuesday three weeks in advance. You will probably be invited to one of these restaurants on a random Tuesday by someone you forgot you gave your number to at a random birthday party in Tribeca, and you will need to seem like you can afford to be at this table with these random strangers, who are all wearing vintage Cartier watches and have all appeared on a past Forbes 30 Under 30 list but have not yet been arrested for a white collar crime. When the waiter visits your table at Raf’s, simply ask, “is the chef using ramps in any of the specials tonight?”

Even if you are not wearing a vintage Cartier watch and have not been named to Forbes 30 Under 30, everyone will realize that you are a refined, elegant foodie with rustic good taste and a sense of culinary adventure, and they will make a mental note to have their chief of staff find you on LinkedIn and invite you to their boat in Capri in late June.

Add it to the quiche, risotto or soup recipe you’ve chosen to prepare for a third date at your place

You have just started dating someone new after escaping from a long-term relationship that really should have been a no-term relationship, and it’s time to invite this new person—who you hope is not yet another sociopath—to your home for dinner and awkward first-time sex. Cooking with ramps is a leading indicator of being marriage material, and putting ramps into the pre-sex food you prepare will make you seem like a refined, elegant foodie with rustic good taste and a sense of culinary adventure.

There are a wide variety of approachable ramp-forward dishes that you can prepare for your future ex, ranging from quiche to risotto to soup. You can find many recipes for Ramp Quiche, Ramp Risotto and Ramp Soup in any recipe book written by a French-American chef directly descended from a noble Parisian family indirectly responsible for the death of a lot of peasants between 1789 and 1799. Since risotto will bloat you and your awkward first-time sex partner, soup will make you seem too infirm for sex, and quiche will make you seem gay, a great alternative to Ramp Quiche, Ramp Risotto and Ramp Soup is ordering sashimi and then forgetting to put the ramps into the scrambled eggs that you make the next morning after you have slightly less awkward second-time sex with your new emotional dependent.

Bonus use case: compost

After 7 days of enjoying the sight of your bunch of ramps in your refrigerator, you will notice that the leaves of your ramps have started to look like your eyelids the morning after a long night of drinking three $28 Fumo Bianco cocktails at Raf’s with strangers who wear vintage Cartier watches and will soon be arrested for white collar crimes. This is an indication that you should replace your wilty ramps with a new bunch from the farmers forager’s market. Now that not composting non-meat food scraps is considered a white collar crime in New York City, a great use case for ramps is putting them (it?) into the compost bin in the basement of your building.

You will probably bump into your building’s superintendent in the basement, and when he sees you brandishing a bunch of ramps, he will know that you are a refined, elegant foodie with rustic good taste and a sense of culinary adventure.

Happy Ramps Season to all who celebrate!

This one is dedicated to my friend W.F.F., a refined, elegant foodie with rustic good taste and a sense of culinary adventure.