September 20, 2022 – Dirty secret alert (!): Many of the wild mushrooms fungi lovers seek out on Monterey Bay menus aren’t from the area, or even wider California.
A combination of demand, drought and lagging state legislation mean a lot of them are imported from damper lands further north, namely Oregon and Washington.
The unofficial mayor of Monterey Peninsula mushrooms, Anthony Gerbino of Julia’s Vegetarian Restaurant in Pacific Grove, is launching two major projects to address that.
To review, Gerbino is the same mycology-obsessed chef-owner-operator willing to brave mortal injury for cordyceps to serve on his mushroom-rich lineup: He once broke his leg hunting them near the Lone Cypress and emerged from the hospital to dish them to diners that very night.
Appearing alongside cordyceps on Julia’s menu are items like chanterelle pasta salad, a Bar Harbor lobster (mushroom) roll, wild mushroom chowder and OMG-grade candy cap French toast.
He understands that unless ordering mushrooms en masse, restaurants pay steep postage to FedEx and UPS to get fresh fungi.
That inspired the recent launch of Gold Coast Purveyors, which is importing a hundred pounds of mushrooms from the Pacific Northwest every week.
The business plan is relatively simple: order big amounts, ship via air freight rather than retail delivery, pick up the shipments at San Jose International Airport, then distribute that plunder among other restaurateurs and markets in the area.
“I needed a better, more reliable supply of mushrooms, and I knew other operators did too,” Gerbino says.
Wild Fish in Pacific Grove and private chefs have already sourced with Gold Coast, and talks to team up with locally and nationally owned organic markets are underway. Meanwhile everything GCP brings in appears at Julia’s and its Carmel-by-the-Sea Farmers’ Market stall.
On the new Gold Coast website, lush photos of seasonal offerings leap off the screen—pudgy porcini, golden chanterelles, robust lobster mushrooms, meaty matsutakes, sizable Prince Agaricuses, earthy black truffles, shapely chicken of the woods and even alluring blue chanterelles. Those available for the week appear at the top of the page.
A sister project will further boost mushroom understanding—and availability—according to a longer, more patient and more ambitious plan.
Black Magic will be a research-and-grow lab that sits across Forest Avenue from the Forest Hills Shopping Center that Julia’s calls home.
Most of the growing equipment—like a 150-liter Autoclave pressure cooker for sterilization and a 60-liter culture tank to raise mushrooms quickly—has been shipped to the property.
The aim is to grow mushrooms that haven’t been sown commercially or have been challenging to bring to market because of shelf life, awareness and/or perception.
“I’ve got a good hunch that if we’re successful it’s going to be a game changer for the industry,” Gerbino says.
By gathering data over time—across years, not months—Black Magic looks to evolve cultivation techniques and weigh yields against profits.
As Gerbino says, “I can grow it, but is it worth it to grow?”
Labs domestically and abroad have had success with morels, but he adds his focus will be “on things no one has done before.”
A round of fundraising is scheduled for early 2023, with an eye toward gathering a small team of savvy mycologists to help lead the operation.
By the way, Gerbino mentions, that was never the plan. But his personal passion met so much enthusiasm he felt compelled to go big.
“It was something on the side, a crazy hobby idea in my spare time,” he says. “But when talking with customers at the restaurant, I notice I’m not done with my elevator pitch and this guy’s already got his checkbook out. I started thinking of a larger project. I see the benefits of opening up to the wider world of what we can grow, with the end goal of producing a wide variety—not one or two mushrooms but eight, 10 or 12.”
Joshua Baker is director of operations for the new endeavors. He came to the business after a career as a Spanish literature professor with a penchant for research, who became consumed by the vast benefits of mushrooms.
“The more I learned about mushrooms, the more intrigued I became in terms of health benefits and sustainability, in terms of both wild and cultivated,” says Baker. “I like being able to provide a sustainable food product that grows naturally and isn’t genetically modified.”
He points out that Gold Coast and Black Magic are “two very different projects”—one distribution, one cultivation—that happen to share the same landing place: more mushrooms for Monterey Bay and beyond.
“We want to provide mushrooms, to research mushrooms, to explore mushrooms and to grow mushrooms,” Baker says. “The end goal: to promote the consumption of mushrooms.”
More at goldcoastpurveyors.com and juliasveg.com.
About the author
Mark C. Anderson, Edible Monterey Bay's managing editor, appears on "Friday Found Treasures" via KRML 94.7 every week, a little after 12pm noon. Reach him via mark@ediblemontereybay.com.
