The Taming of the 'Shroom

“In Heaven, every bite has mushroom in it.” If I didn’t know this was a quote from my friend Jon, mushroom preparer extraordinaire, I would have easily believed these words came from the pen of a Doctor of the Church. Earthy, savory, and tender, mushrooms are to cuisine what violas are to an orchestra—you think you don’t need those unostentatious middle notes, but drop them out and see how hollow it is. More closely related to animals than to plants, and with their own folklore rich in fairy mischief and poisonous exploits, mushrooms are almost as fascinating as they are delicious. I recently met up with Wade Watson, the owner of Pontchartrain Mushrooms and an expert fungal forager, for a mushroom hunt in Honey Island Swamp and a chat about mushrooms—the good, the bad, and the creepy.

It should go without saying, but we are the country who came up with America’s Funniest Home Videos, so here goes: don’t go mushroom hunting unless you really, really know what you’re doing or have an experienced guide. To take a dramatic example, Amanita caesarea, the Caesar’s mushroom, is a tasty delight that was savored by the emperor Claudius; the similar-looking and related Amanita phalloides, the death cap, was beloved by the emperor Nero—for getting rid of Claudius. Even the distinctive and delicious chanterelle has an imitator in the jack-o-lantern mushroom, which is unlikely to kill you but may make you long for death.

After a stop at the Slidell Walmart for steel-toed rubber boots, insect repellent, and a blueberry fried pie (I am now officially a Louisiana journalist), I met Watson at the entry to the Honey Island Swamp Wildlife Management Area. He was easy to spot, since he was wearing a mushroom t-shirt and was also the only person there. As I tugged on my new boots, Watson explained a key difference between a state or national park and a WMA: different protections mean, essentially, that there’s much more freedom for human use in an WMA. State parks follow the “take only pictures, leave only footprints” philosophy, but licensed individuals are free to hunt and forage responsibly in a wildlife management area. Holders of a Louisiana Wild Stamp, which runs about $10 per year, can forage up to a five-gallon bucket of natural goodies from a site.

[Also read: Strawberry Fields Forever: Remembering an agricultural, immigrant heritage.]

Though I liked the idea of coming back with a five-gallon bucket of nature’s bounty, as we drove into Honey Island, Watson explained that this was part of the state’s generally loose regulatory attitude toward foraging, a niche in cuisine that’s been growing in recent years. Nearby and similarly lush states like Georgia and North Carolina have enacted certain legal and permitting frameworks around naturally foraged food in recent years; in Louisiana, anyone capable of holding a bucket can fill it with what they believe to be chanterelles, knock on the back door of a restaurant, and ask for fifteen bucks a pound. The legal liability falls on the restaurant, not John Q. Bucketholder. 

We reached Watson’s mushroom hunting grounds and got out of the car—I was careful to squelch through as much mud as I could in my new boots. Hogs had been through the area recently, as evidenced by unsettlingly large and dense hoofprints and rooted-up areas. Watson explained that they may have been looking for native truffles, which are edible but rarely exploited locally, though certain kinds that grow among the roots of pecan trees are sometimes harvested by orchard owners elsewhere in the South. 

In Heaven, every bite has mushroom in it.

As we walked, Watson talked to me about how he’d become “the mushroom guy”—a kitchen veteran of restaurants like La Provence, Galatoire’s Bistro, Borgne, and others, as well as former executive chef at the Camelot Club, he’d realized a few years ago that the long hours and moves required of restaurant work weren’t compatible with the family life he was eager to enjoy. He and his wife began reading up on mushrooms, and Watson got the bug: this way, he explained, he could stay in the culinary industry without being in kitchens until the wee hours. He also enjoys spending more time in nature and pointed out woodpecker holes, termite feasts, fragments of a crawfish that had been enjoyed by some critter or another, and, wonderfully because sufficiently far away, an alligator. 

We didn’t find anything edible on our trip: it was too early for the summer swelter chanterelles thrive on, and the big bloom that follows the annual high-water period hadn’t yet come to pass either, so the only obvious fungi represented were the steplike shelves climbing along the sides of fallen trees. I didn’t leave empty-handed, though; Watson had brought me a bag of king oyster mushrooms, fat and promising, that he had grown in his growhouse.

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As we drove back to my car, Watson described his growing operation in Slidell. For something so connected to the earth, mushrooms do best with controlled surroundings in “captivity.” The king, blue, golden, and elm oyster mushrooms and lion’s mane mushrooms that make up most of Watson’s product are given a sterilized or pasteurized substrate to grow in, free from any competition from other fungi. The climate is held at the optimum for a given type, and one batch, well tended, may “fruit”—i.e., put out the edible stalks we know and love—several times before depleting the supplies in the substrate. Watson has developed a business model (“Composting the Coast”) that will make use of the used substrate, which is perfectly good soil, and is working with Blaise Pezold, coastal and environmental program manager of the Meraux Foundation in St. Bernard Parish to put the model in place.

In addition to edible mushrooms, Watson has begun experimenting with medicinal reishi and turkey tail and with specimens in the creepy Cordyceps genus. Cordyceps species invade insects or caterpillars, grow throughout the bugs, and change their behavior to the fungus’ benefit—the victim climbs to the top of a leaf or twig, so that when the fungus’ fruiting body bursts forth from its host’s head, the spores have a better vantage point from which to spread. This has inspired at least one zombie-themed video game franchise, though Watson hopes to find an organic pest control solution from his research.

Clutching my bag of bounty, I said goodbye and hit the road back to New Orleans, thirty miles and a world away from Honey Island Swamp. Two days later, at Jon’s, we sautéed the mushrooms with some wilted spinach and served them alongside brined cucumbers and a cornbread-stuffed chicken breast purchased on a recent wing through Acadiana. Good friends, a previously unknown Lily Tomlin movie, and a plate full of mushrooms—close enough to heaven for me.  

Try Watson's recipe for bread and butter chanterelle pickles.

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This article originally appeared in our May 2018 issue. Subscribe to our print magazine today.