A Love Letter to Ramps & Notes on Where to Eat Them in NYC

Xoxo, two food-obsessed Brooklynites

Apr 28, 2025

Hello and happy ramp season, people! Today, we (Phoebe of The Dish and Olivia of Right on Franklin) are joining forces to celebrate everyone’s favorite allium. Here, you’ll find a NYC ramp extravaganza featuring a love letter to ramps by Phoebe, along with a list of recommendations for where to eat them in NYC (plus more inspiration!) from Olivia.

A Love Letter to Ramps

By Phoebe Fry

Few ingredients stir up as much excitement and devotion as the ramp. A type of wild onion native to the forests of eastern North America, ramps appear briefly in early spring, capturing the imaginations of food-obsessed northeasterners, flooding social media feeds, and gracing every trendy restaurant menu from Brooklyn to Boston. They’re rare, romantic, and as anyone who’s wandered through a farmers market in April knows, expensive. Ramps can go for a steep $20 per pound (and upwards) in some grocery stores, and many New Yorkers are willing to pay the price.

If you’re skeptical about the ramp craze, I understand. It can feel a little ridiculous. But then again, so can most things about New York City — and not always in the charming way.

Consider:

The astronomical price for apartments without natural light, or even basic appliances like a dishwasher
The lack of clean public restrooms (or any public restrooms, for that matter)
The territorial audacity of grimy pigeons and squirrels
The tiny dogs wearing puffer jackets and booties that cost more than your monthly rent
The $7 lattes that somehow feel essential for survival
The constant lines at Trader Joe’s, no matter the time of day
The local trains that mysteriously turn express mid-ride
The unrelenting stench of hot trash in the summer

In the grand scheme of things, the ramp craze feels like the good kind of ridiculous. Green, garlicky absurdity. Come April, New Yorkers — famously hardened, blunt, and overworked — soften at the sight of ramps. We know their season is short and their supply is limited. If we hesitate, we’ll miss them. Eyes widen when ramps appear at our favorite restaurants. We line up early at Union Square to collect muddy paper bags full of spring.

Do ramps taste better than their allium cousins? It’s up for debate. They’re more pungent than scallions, more tender and sweet than leeks, with a garlicky, slightly grassy flavor that’s all their own. We reverently grill them whole, blitz them into pesto, sizzle them into soft-scrambled eggs, fold them into butter. These are not scallions. These are not leeks. These are RAMPS. This is not normal pesto. These are not normal eggs. This is RAMP pesto! These are RAMP eggs! The novelty tastes delicious.

Part of their magic, of course, comes from how they arrive, sprouting from the once-frosty soil, thawing in the sun. Part of it lies in how they’re gathered — foraged by hand from the damp, shady forest floor.

Country dwellers, go ahead: roll your eyes at our $20 ramps and our chi-chi restaurant menus. Guard your secret ramp patches and savor your slow mornings spent foraging. Here in the city, we’ll be shelling out for a transient taste of wild onion and pretending we found them ourselves.

Where to Eat Ramps in NYC

By Olivia Weiss

I always think spring has the most grand arrival, announcing itself as pockets of green appear overnight, bulbs bloom into flowers along sidewalks, and bounties of kales, potatoes, and onions at the farmers markets are replaced with bright pink tulips, long stalks of rhubarb, and the first of the season’s berries. Suddenly, like moths to a flame, the chefs of New York begin to bring the brightest and freshest seasonal produce onto their menus.

Ramps, with their concentrated 4-week season and persistent presence each spring, have a sort of celebrity status in the food world. Chefs collect them fervently and add them into their menus while they can — the fleeting access to the allium feeling like a special occasion to be taken advantage of. I suppose it has turned into a meme at this point, but I am always amazed by how ramps take New York by storm each April.

My own version of an ingredient love-letter, my personal favorite series of Phoebe’s, is obsessively tracking how ingredients are used across recipes, menus, and how they are mentioned in any food-related content. With ramp season just over halfway over, I collected every single ramp appearance I witnessed so that you, too, can revel in the glory of “the stinky weeds” and join the craze. Bonus points if you send us ramps you see pop up elsewhere that we missed. For research!!!

Menus

Superiority Burger - griddled gai lan with ramps, griddled chopped ramp rice, pumpkin with halloumi and ramp pesto, grits cake with whipped ricotta and griddled ramps….
Gem Home - Ramp focaccia and asparagus, comte, and ramp tarts
Ramp cream cheese at Pop Up Bagels and Jubilee Marketplace
Elbow Bread - Ramp knishes, and ramp and cheddar mustard for sweet potato pretzels
Laurel Bakery - Ramp and cantal escargot
Kimchee Market - Ramp kimchi
La Cantine - Ramp butter with radishes and sesame focaccia