Trend to Table: How Purslane Went from Sidewalk Nuisance to Fine Dining Darling

10 Minute read

17 Jul 2025

Journalist

Once dismissed as a weed, purslane is now being foraged, farmed, and fawned over on restaurant menus around the world.

Purslane’s leaves are juicy—like miniature nopales without the prickles, or pea shoots that procreated with aloe. Its flavor is mild and elusive: close your eyes, take a bite, and you’re more likely to identify romaine than purslane. It’ll never be mistaken for an herb or a spice. Sometimes it evokes the sea, but without the salt. If you like seaweed, you’ll probably like purslane.

I fell in love with purslane because my husband loves it. The two are inextricably linked for me. Ari’s former restaurant Musi evolved so fully around purslane that its leaves—stylized in a graceful shrug, adorned with a single yellow flower, and gilded with gold leaf—became the restaurant’s logo.

From Garden Nuisance to Gourmet Ingredient

Purslane used to piss me off (I guess you could say that about the husband, too). A decade ago, I didn’t know what it was—just a weed with fat purple stems that grew relentlessly in my planters and between the rocks in my garden. Pulling it out was a summer chore. I definitely didn’t eat it before Ari.

Around the world, purslane goes by many names and grows both along the sea and in sidewalk cracks. In Hawai‘i, it blankets sandy shores, where we call it 'akulikuli kula. It’s at once Lebanese, Palestinian, Mexican, and Indian—indigenous to, and claimed by, many disparate cuisines.

Google searches for purslane still mostly lead to foragers’ blogs and wild food sites urging readers to make purslane salads and stews—not fine dining menus. And yet, over the years, I’ve watched purslane show up on increasingly fancy menus—sometimes listed, sometimes not. It’s become an “if you know, you know” kind of leaf, tweezered onto plates alongside sorrel and nasturtium—both of which have already achieved Fancy Gourmet Leaf status. Trust me: purslane is the Next Big Leaf.

Purslane on the Plate: Where Chefs Are Using It Now

For the last five years, I’ve kept a running list of every time I’ve spotted purslane on a menu (other than at Musi) or seen it wielded by a chef. With heirloom tomatoes at Elwood. Dashi-glazed scallops at ITV (now Laurel) in Philadelphia. In the kitchen at Francie in Brooklyn. With lobster mushroom confit at Elske in Chicago. Tucked between morels at Oyster Oyster in Washington, D.C.

Johnny Spero of Reverie in D.C. says, “I love the texture more than anything. It also has this really great balance of acidity and salinity that makes it a really great garnish. It does more than just look pretty.” As he shifts to a summer menu that will be entirely vegetarian in July and August, purslane will star.

Purslane isn’t for everyone. “I do like the flavor; however, I find the texture challenging, as I do with all succulents,” said Nich Bazik, chef and owner of Provenance in Philadelphia.

At Ember and Ash in Philadelphia, Scott Calhoun is eagerly awaiting this year’s arrival from Green Meadow Farms to use in his beef set. “I love purslane not only for its flavor—a bright, crunchy sort of citrus and sorrel finish to the herb—but also for its health benefits. It’s super high in Omega-3, and vitamins A, C, and E. Farmer Ian Brendle picks it between rows of crops, where it grows as a weed,” said Calhoun. “In our new beef shin set, it complements the acid in the poblano salad and salsa verde. For the salsa verde, we use the larger stem ends of the purslane, blending them into a tomatillo-based salsa.”

Ember and Ash Beef Shin with Purslane. Credit: Mike Prince

In Mexico, Verdolaga Is a Cultural and Culinary Powerhouse

This past April, I found purslane—verdolaga—at every Michelin-starred and Michelin-adjacent restaurant I visited in Mexico City. Its smoked stems were integrated into the tamal and balanced atop a flatiron steak floating in mole at Lorea. Purslane topped a totoaba adobada at Fónico and appeared in a salad at Caracol de Mar. It’s used with wanton abandon in Mexican fine dining—so much so that it’s even cultivated on the pass at Balcón del Zócalo and in the restaurant’s rooftop hydroponic garden, ensuring they never run out.

Pepe Salinas, executive chef of Balcón del Zócalo, is known for conceptual menus that question politics and spark discourse around climate change and sustainability. In one dish called El Buffet, purslane is arranged like scales on a tempura-fried nopal and surrounded by accoutrements made from kitchen byproducts: crispy fried potato skins, a harissa from citrus rinds, a tonnato from leftover bits of totoaba, and garum powder made from fish trimmings. It’s both a commentary on food waste and one of the best dishes I’ve tasted in recent memory. This fall, purslane will feature on a new menu entitled Hecho en Mexico—an ode to Mexican culture that also comments on American policies. The ingredient will appear in several dishes, alongside epazote, a variety of lettuces, carrot tops, and beet greens—all grown in-house.

"I started using verdolagas ten years ago because I believe they have great value in Mexican culture. Verdolagas are part of the quelites—more than 500 species that grow in humid areas, such as along riverbanks and in the milpas of Xochimilco, where the milpas were once floating and are now in the Valley of Mexico,” said Salinas. “For me, having a restaurant in the center of Mexico City, it seemed important to give space to an ingredient that is deeply Mexican—one that has been lost over time as people stopped valuing it for being considered part of a ‘basic’ diet. We hadn’t realized its properties: the quality of its flavor, texture, and nutritional value.” Purslane’s cousins, like huauzontles (similar to spinach or watercress), were also essential to the traditional triad of corn, chile, and beans in the milpa.

“For me, using verdolagas as a first course ten years ago at Balcón del Zócalo meant incorporating them into a tlayuda with escamoles, which also come from the central valleys of the country and are high in protein and quality. The verdolagas provide an acidic flavor, a freshness, and a pleasantly velvety texture. I added spirulina—an alga that grows in the lakes of the Valley of Mexico—which once provided protein to the people of that region and was also mixed into tortillas. That dish was a tribute to the culture and gastronomy of Mexico, and verdolagas have been a fundamental part of many of my dishes ever since,” said Salinas.

On a tour of Central de Abastos—one of the largest wholesale markets in the world, spanning over 800 acres and housing 2,000 vendors—I met Alfredo Cruz Camacho, the farmer behind Saladetta Farms. I tasted through his delicate boxes of microgreens, edible flowers, and mini radishes, which he supplies to Michelin-recognized restaurants like Quintonil, Raíz Polanco, Comedor Jacinta, and Máximo Bistro. But under that same tent, alongside those tiny treasures, were massive bundles of purslane—verdolaga. Despite once complaining about purslane overtaking my garden, I could never have imagined it being harvested at such scale. These neat bundles were the size of hay bales.

Purslane’s use has crossed the border stateside. In the past two months, I’ve seen it everywhere on menus at upscale Mexican restaurants in Philadelphia—on nearly every savory dish at the newly reopened Tequila’s, and adorning the chile-braised beef cheeks at the just-opened, live-fire kitchen Amá, where chef Frankie Ramirez celebrates six regions of Mexico.

Purslane’s ubiquity on both sides of the border—its ability to cross every border, really, growing practically everywhere—unites fine dining, indigenous cuisines, foragers, and climate warriors.