The Boston Mycological Club
Photo by Michael Piazza
In 2022 the New York Times named mushrooms the “ingredient of the year.” Whether you were watching Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind on Netflix or turning the pages of a mycological deep dive like Aliya Whiteley’s The Secret Life of Fungi, mushrooms were inescapable (quite literally, in fact, in the post-apocalyptic HBO series The Last of Us).
For the members of the Boston Mycological Club, which was founded in 1895, the life of fungi is not a secret but a fascination, and all the newfound interest has been both welcome and curious. For those with a passion for mycology (the study of fungi), the BMC has long been a resource and a point of connection, allowing folks to gather for foraging trips, to trade recipes and to host lectures on the latest discoveries.
Tyler Akabane became intrigued by mushrooms about a decade ago after finding morels on the campus where he was working as a teacher. There was less of a mycological mania then, so he turned to the BMC for help confirming his find and ended up also finding kinship with a group of people with serious knowledge and fervor for fungi.
“Let’s say you like to play baseball and you’ve never met another person who likes baseball, and then you’re around a hundred other people that love baseball,” recalls Akabane fondly. “It was, like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is so cool!’ There was a really strong connection.”
Akabane’s excitement led to a partnership with a local mushroom wholesaler, which was an apprenticeship of sorts. Last year he opened his own shop in Somerville dedicated to all things mushrooms. It was the kind of serendipitous outcome that the BMC fosters, thanks to its ability to nurture interest and stoke relationships. (For more on The Mushroom Shop, see Andrew Janjigian’s story in our Fall 2022 issue.)
When Susan Goldhor was new to Cambridge she was looking for a way to make friends and because of her background in biology she thought the BMC might be a good fit. She volunteered to write a column for the newsletter. That was over 25 years ago. She served as president for over a decade until stepping aside this summer. She has seen membership grow to over 1,000 people, with a notable spike during COVID shutdowns.
“People were really hungry for a social activity they could do outdoors,” says Goldhor. “They really wanted walks.” People were also hungry for delicious food. Part of the popularity of the club, Goldhor believes, is the fact that it is nature-oriented as well as food-oriented. Banquets and potlucks featuring foraged mushrooms have always drawn crowds.
Goldhor is quick to point out that you don’t have to be an expert to join the club. All you have to do is follow your curiosity. “Whether you are in the city or the park or the woods, any new thing that you learn makes you see that ecosystem with new eyes,” she explains. “So from that viewpoint alone, learning about mushrooms and fungi makes all the difference in how you take a walk in that ecosystem.” Just don’t be surprised if intrigue becomes obsession.
Maria Pinto, another club member, can attest to this journey from newcomer to expert. She vividly recalls being in the woods photographing a yellow Amanita muscaria. “It was this absolutely stunning cap-and-stem mushroom that shone like a precious metal on the forest floor,” says Pinto. “I had never seen anything remotely resembling this fleshy sculpture. I was just instantly hooked by the weirdness and wanted to learn everything I could about the realm it belonged to.”
Learn she did. She joined the BMC, attending talks, going on walks and soaking up everything she could. Maria now leads walks of her own, does cooking demos and is even writing a book on mushrooms and culture. The fact that fungi have entered the zeitgeist has been gratifying for her, keeping her busy sharing her passion with others.
“Fungi do so much important work and are so staggeringly understudied, one can’t help but be excited about how this wave of interest could result in more students of the fifth kingdom,” she says. Like Goldhor, she sees this increased popularity as a way for others to get further in touch with the natural world. “Sure, it means that sometimes others have gotten to your hunting grounds before you have, but of course it’s a net good to have more people interested in the topic, while also getting out into the real world and having more of a stake in our parks and woodlands and other natural resources.”
Akabane is hopeful that this newfound attention will help our taste buds evolve. “More awareness will help expand the culinary palate of our country so mushrooms are really a part of the cuisine,” he notes.
There is good reason to be hopeful about a national diet featuring more mushrooms. Mushrooms are good for your gut and your brain and immune system, as they are incredibly nutrient-rich. They are also delicious and rich in umami, allowing them to be the star of a dish and function as a healthier meat alternative. And a national downtick in meat consumption would be a real boon to the very environment in which mushrooms—and people—thrive.
When I asked Pinto about her favorite mushroom dishes she mentioned black trumpets in pasta, Jamaican curries and callaloo dishes; crispy rice flour battered chicken-of-the-woods tossed in butter and hot sauce; jerked, roasted hen-of-the-woods; salted chanterelles smoked like marshmallows over a campfire and eaten right off the stick; and several others before concluding, “Is it clear I can’t pick a favorite?”
Akabane went with tempura-fried maitake (hen-of-the-woods) mushrooms, while noting that 10 other worthy dishes also popped into his head. If those responses make you as hungry as they make me, then the Boston Mycological Club will be able to point you in the right direction, whether it’s down a forest path or toward a culinary exploration. Mushrooms may have been the 2022 New York Times ingredient of the year, but in this club they’ve held that title since 1895.
This story appeared in the Fall 2023 issue.