Austin Mycophiles Drive Growing Taste for Local Mushrooms

You'd be forgiven for not thinking of Texas as a hot spot for wild mushrooms. But Austin is quickly making a name for itself as a place for fungi fans to unite their love of science and food.

Angel Schatz, who's part of the leadership circle for Central Texas Mycological Society, didn't even think about mushrooms when she moved to Austin, assuming that it was too dry for moisture-loving fungi. But when she learned that morels – a prized fungus among foodies due to their earthy, nutty flavor – grew within city limits, her perspective changed. "It just opens up a whole world, you're like, 'What?! There's chanterelles here too?' And then you just keep digging and finding all these other mushrooms."

Wild mushrooms abound within Austin city limits, including boletes, chanterelles, lion's mane, chicken of the woods, oysters, reishi, wood ear ... the list goes on.

Foraging Mushrooms

McCartney Taylor describes mushroom hunting as "Easter eggs for adults." When Taylor got interested in foraging back in 2010, he looked for a group in Austin doing "mushrooming" but couldn't find any. "I was having so much fun, I said, 'You know what, I guess I'll make my own group.'" Taylor created the Texas Wild Mushrooming Group, which has now grown to more than 2,000 members on Meetup.

Morels are prized above all else, Taylor says. "And Texas has such a phenomenal morel season, if you know where to look."

Austin's morel season is currently underway. "Morels pop up in Austin when the redbuds bloom, which typically is somewhere between March 20 and April 15," Taylor says. A good morel season in Austin will last around three weeks, but on a bad year, you'll only have a one-week window, he added. Temperature, humidity, and rainfall all influence the outcome of a season.

Taylor won't give away the location of his prized "honey holes," tried-and-true spots where morels consistently appear each season. But he provides some helpful clues: Look under Ashe juniper trees that are situated close to a river, particularly groves that are on slanted terrain.

Chanterelle season follows morel season. "We had a really abundant chanterelle season last year," Schatz says. It's tricky to put an exact date on any mushroom season since it all comes down to climate. "When it feels like a sauna outside, when it's really sticky, with almost flash flood-style rain, that's when we get chanterelles," she says. "It really is weather-dependent and conditions have to be favorable for each kind of mushroom species."

Taylor is encouraged by the growing numbers of mycophiles and myco-curious people. "I am a citizen scientist and I'm happy when other people get excited about mushrooming," he says. Those who are interested in mushrooming should always join a foraging group so that they know what's edible and what's not. All types of folks are joining his Texas Wild Mushrooming Group – kids, adults, retirees – but the common thread are those interested in the natural sciences, he said.

Mushrooms at Night

The Central Texas Mycological Society has been active since 2019 and now has close to 700 members, Schatz notes. She hopes the society will help people appreciate local mushrooms through educational programming, cooking demos, forays, art programs, and other events centered on fungi.

In early March, the society led a New Moon Night Walk, attracting nocturnal naturalists from all over. We met at Red Bluff Neighborhood Park, a place with numerous hiking trails and a view of Downtown Austin that Schatz describes as "the Mount Bonnell of East Austin." Around 30 people attended, a mix of adults and families, using UV flashlights to illuminate mushrooms that would appear brown, beige, or white in the daylight. The fluorescing fungi produced diverse shades of reds, oranges, and purples. The enthusiasm was audible – each time a UV light connected with a fluorescent body, mushrooms were greeted with "oohs and aahs" from their human admirers.

"We want to show the magic of mushrooms in all facets," says Schatz. "We would not exist if we didn't have the fungi queendom doing all this work building our soil and transferring nutrients to our plants."

Growing Mushrooms

But fungi love isn't limited to foraging. Local restaurants, and home cooks, are embracing the pronounced taste for specialty mushrooms, and many local businesses are cropping up to support demand.

Hi-Fi Mycology, Austin's first urban mushroom farm, has been selling mushrooms at farmers' markets across Central Texas since 2017. And then there's Smallhold, an urban mushroom farm company that began in Brooklyn and has bet big on Austin. It now has two warehouse mushroom farms in South Austin and Buda. Employees wearing hair nets, KN95 masks, and crisp, stylish uniforms reveal eye-popping, immaculate mushrooms in chambers that are humidity- and temperature-controlled based on each fungi species' preference.

"The bigger picture idea with Smallhold is getting people to eat more mushrooms and to change their perspective of mushrooms," says Andrew Carter, co-founder and CEO of Smallhold. "We want people to become mushroom people, and ... more people [making] that change in their diet can help drive bigger change on our planet and our ecosystem." The Buda farm opened just last summer and already processes around 6,000 pounds of mushrooms a week.

Eating Mushrooms

Local chef Philip Speer, of Comedor and Assembly, often collaborates with local mycology groups and frequently sources mushrooms from local farms to use in his restaurant.

Speer says that cooking with local mushrooms has "opened up the door for creativity" for him as a chef. His menu at Comedor features a rotating mix of local mushrooms based on the season. "All mushrooms are great for flavors, texture, beauty, creativity," he said. "There's just all sorts of ways to use them and it's very exciting and very fun."

One of Speer's favorite ways to cook with mushrooms is making lion's mane birria tacos. "Birria tacos are this huge sensation right now and people often enjoy the mushroom ones more than they enjoy the short rib ones!" he said. "They're just always surprised at how delicious, satisfying, and fulfilling it can be even though it's not your typical protein."

Taylor also likes to cook with lion's mane that he forages himself. "It is absolutely delicious and if you cook it in butter, you will swear you're eating lobster." Taylor's favorite mushrooms to cook with are chanterelles. He shreds them, fries them up in a pan, and adds them to spaghetti carbonara, saying, "It is oh-so-good."

Studying (and Loving) Mushrooms

Mycophilic community continues to grow here in Austin. The UT Fungarium, a new fungi collection that will be preserved at the university, kicked off this month. Liz Bowman, a postdoctoral research associate at UT-Austin's Brackenridge Field Lab, said at the kickoff that Texas has a rich diversity of fungi that can now be properly documented. The UT Fungarium will do many things, including helping identify new fungi species and informing our understanding of why fungi look and behave the way they do. The UT Fungarium is collaborating with the Central Texas Mycological Society to include community volunteers and citizen scientists with the maintenance and growth of the collection.

A new student organization at UT-Austin called the Longhorn Mycological Society just popped up onto the scene in January. UT junior Ali Shirazi, the founder of the group, says they already have close to 70 members. Shirazi attributes that number to a recent shift among his peers who have a fascination for fungi. "We hope to serve as a place for students who have any interest in mycology and be able to provide resources for that," he said. "I look forward to having the opportunities to lead our own forays into green spaces and to collect and do research as citizen scientists."