Some people look at the ocean and see a pretty view. Taku Kondo gazes over a beach and sees horseneck-clam sashimi, crunchy kelp pickles and sea-urchin pasta served in its own spiky shell.
The Bay Area native is the creator of Outdoor Chef Life, a 700,000-subscriber YouTube channel devoted to foraging and cooking in nature. On any given day, you might find him and partner Jocelyn Gonzalez, the channel’s videographer, scraping herring eggs off seaweed, flipping rocks to find octopus for ceviche or anchoring a smoker in a river to make whiskey-maple-glazed steelhead trout.
It’s quite fun, but cooking in the wild can court danger. In Alaska, they had a dicey encounter with a curious Alaskan grizzly (“Bear approached and I feared for her life”). And Kondo once got yanked off his kayak by a probable dogtooth tuna (“Big fish pulls me in! These fish are crazy”).
Lots of people make content about wilderness cooking, but Kondo is set apart by his knife skills and culinary prowess gleaned from working as an omakase sushi chef in San Francisco. Hunkering down over spiny-lobster ramen he boiled on a windy beach — or expertly sliced sashimi he caught and prepared on his bobbing kayak — you might hear him murmur, “That’s some Michelin-star plating right there.”
Kondo no longer works in restaurants, instead focusing on YouTube adventuring full-time. This past year, he and Gonzalez did a whirlwind tour of New Zealand, Australia, Japan and the Pacific Northwest. He’s now writing a cookbook about foraging, fishing and knives from his temporary base in Guerneville.
Q What are you doing in the Russian River right now?
A Last night, we filmed a YouTube video for a series on my channel called Deliciously Invasive. We take invasive species in the area and make something delicious. We did bullfrogs, which are in the real calm waters nearby, and made some Thai-inspired fried frog legs.
Q Bullfrogs are a problem in California?
A Yeah. They eat a lot of the native frogs, baby birds, all kinds of stuff — whatever they can fit in their mouths.
Q How did you get into foraging?
A I was inspired by a book I’d randomly picked up called “The Bay Area Forager” (by Mia Andler and Kevin Feinstein). It talked about a lot of edible plants in the Bay. I’d walk around the city or be on a hike, and I started identifying plants — like, that one’s edible, that one’s edible, and that one’s deadly poisonous. From there, I moved into coastal foraging, which is more protein, like crab and fish and eel. That opened my eyes even more, especially because growing up, I did a lot of fishing with my dad in Osaka.
Q What are the joys you get from this?
A We live in this very big city of San Francisco, but just outside the city, you can catch a ton of fish and forage the freshest seafood. I think that’s super cool as a sushi chef — to connect with your ingredients and some of the best seafood out there, that’s like a chef’s dream.
Q What are some of your favorite things to forage?
A Sea urchin, mussels, clams and mushrooms. We get all kinds of mushrooms from Santa Cruz to Berkeley to the North Bay, like porcini, chanterelles, hedgehog, cauliflower and matsutake is probably my favorite. Also seaweed, which is plentiful on the coastline and is very delicious and nutritious. You can dehydrate it or make seasoning from it, and in Japanese cuisine, you can use kelp for stocks and sauces.
Q Your “Best Lobster Catch and Cook” video has 2.6 million views …
A It was my first time going night diving. We were around the L.A. area, it was pitch black, and we jumped in the water and started looking for lobster. They’re just walking all around the rocks, anywhere from 3 feet deep all the way to 30 feet. I cut out the meat from the shell, sliced it in half longways into bite-sized pieces and paired it with Asian pears and shallots and sea salt. It has a really nice creamy texture and is quite sweet, as well.
Q In another video, you make pickles from a kelp stalk that had washed up. How were they?
A It was delicious. I still love those to this day. We’ve actually become friends with a company, Barnacle Foods, and have our own product — Kelp Chili Crisp — available at every World Market in the U.S.
Q Any advice for people who want to get into foraging?
A Take a walk in nature, slow down and look at the plants. Take pictures of what you think might be edible and try to identify them when you get home. Books are great, but putting yourself in nature and feeling the plants works best to remember.
