I've been thinking about creating a club for people who are interested in foraging - that is collecting wild food. I've been interested in this for a while because my mother showed me how to collect wild burdock when I was nine and I would bring home long roots of it, as a gift for her. Around the same time I fell in love with "My Side Of The Mountain," "The Cay," "A Light In The Forest" and "The Yearling" - all children's books that have the protagonists separated from modern life and living in nature. As a chef, I work in an industry that is responsible for significant environmental destruction. I certainly do not do nearly enough to contadict this in my own restaurant, but it is always on my mind, and I know that I must improve. My goal is to create a restaurant whose central ingredients are all foraged locally. It would be a restaurant that is built around the idea of appreciating and protecting the land in it's most natural and undisturbed form. It would not be too difficult to accomplish this with Miya, as the restaurant has been dynamically changing for years and our guests have enthusiastically supported us through these changes. On my menu, I always have items that I have foraged myself. In 2004, Dr. Wangari Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize. Her African woman's movement is responsible for planting tens of millions of trees, to counter-act deforestation in Africa. She brings to attention the vital connection between environmental destruction, poverty and war. She recalled a special tree that her mother told her, as a child, never to hurt because it was connected to God. Those trees were being razed. Many indiginous cultures, especially the animistic ones, see God everywhere in nature. Perhaps, if we know how to eat from nature, which most of us do not know how to do anymore, we would see it as holy and protect it like Wangari Maathai is doing with her trees. In many religions food and eating has religious significance. Christians have Eucharist where bread and wine is eaten as the symbol of the body of Christ; Muslims have Ramadan where fasting brings them closer to God; in Asian Ancestor worship food is brought to the shrine to feed the soul's of their departed loved ones. Foraging to me is like prayer. It helps bring me closer to nature, and nature always makes me feel closer to God, when I am away, far from the maddening crowd.

Bun Lai, on behalf of Miya's Sushi