Meet Our Founders

Tama Matsuoka Wong is a forager, weed eater, meadow doctor, lawyer and mother of three. She is the author of the backyard field guide and cookbook Foraged Flavor (Clarkson Potter June 2012), nominated for a James Beard award in 2013. After more than twenty-five years as a financial-services lawyer, she launched Meadows and More to connect experts in the fields of meadow restoration, botany, and wildlife with people in the community. For the past three years Tama has supplied Sugar Monk with wild plants, roots, fruits, and flowers, ingredients that are often overlooked as inedible, yet full of flavors that connect us to the natural world. We utilize many of these wild ingredients in our cocktail program in the form of aromatic bitters, tinctures, infusions and syrups while others are important ingredients for our Amari and house made liqueurs.  She is also the official forager for Restaurant Daniel, the pillar of haute gastronomy in Manhattan's Upper East Side. She also works with organizations including the Audubon Society and Slow Food USA. In 2007, she was named Steward of the Year by the New Jersey Forest Service.