Foodie alert: The Beef Haus is presenting gourmets this weekend!

Wild food is on the menu in Wellsville

By Andrew Harris, image of a violin head from Wiki Images

You may love them, or you may not even know what they are, but the kitchen at the Beef Haus on Main Street Wellsville is filled with misers.

The chef sent a trusted collector into the forest to retrieve pounds of an annual treat that was only available during a brief period in the spring each year. In the Genesee River Valley, millions, perhaps billions, of ostrich ferns are emerging from hibernation. These ferns are ancient plants and have been valued by humans for thousands of years.

Beef Haus is serving fiddleheads as both a side dish and main course this weekend. Supplies are limited so don’t wait until next week when the fiddleheads turn into ferns!!

Wellsville happens to be semi-famous for its fiddleheads thanks to a recently deceased member of the Maliseet Nation, an Algonquin tribe from New Brunswick, Canada. Ron Tomah, also known as “The Hawk,” brought the knowledge with him when he settled in Wellsville in the 1950s. Since then, Tomah has shared this knowledge with many locals and cooked many community meals at the Wellsville Elks Lodge. Read more about Ron’s recent death and my 2015 column, “Fiddleheads with the “Hawk:””

**A warning about wild foods like fiddleheads: do not harvest or eat without proper education!! There are several species of ferns in our region, some of which can cause disease. Only one variety is safe to eat and it must be harvested carefully so as not to affect the long-term viability of the fern.