Early this fall I zeroed in on a flash of orange out of the corner of my eye, perched on the gray bark of a large oak tree just off the intersection of Hamlin and Irving Park. I couldn’t believe my luck. It was a Laetiporus sulphureus, aka a chicken of the woods mushroom, fruiting directly across the street from Independence Park. I snapped a photo and confirmed the ID with a fungi-foraging friend, and by lunch I had it sliced up in a saute pan, sizzling in butter. A chicken of the woods really does taste like chicken, but what I couldn’t detect were any heavy metals the fungus may or may not have picked up from the tree, a giant thriving in Chicago’s historically toxic urban substrate. That doesn’t mean they weren’t there.
Maybe it’s coincidence—or maybe it’s an inherently fungal phenomenon—but amid the growing national movement toward decriminalization of psilocybin, it seems like fungi of all varieties are in ascendance in western culture. In Chicago within the last two years, two large indoor mushroom farms have sprouted up. Windy City Mushroom in Humboldt Park just opened a retail storefront to sell its Pioppinos, Chestnuts, and oysters, and while Logan Square’s Four Star Mushrooms sells directly to chefs, you can buy 11 of their varieties directly from Local Foods. These growers join the Wisconsin-based River Valley Farm, the longrunning farmers market stalwart with a restaurant and retail outlet in Ravenswood.
Over the years his grow room expanded to its current size, and while Smurawa sold mushrooms and tinctures to friends, it wasn’t until late September that he went live on Instagram @fullcirclefungi offering freshly harvested edible mushrooms by the half pound, inoculated and grown on sterilized blocks of sawdust and soybean hulls. “The ultimate goal is for people to understand the importance and benefit of incorporating mushrooms into a regular diet and making them accessible to everyone.” To that end he presents pro mushroom workshops, most recently one on home cultivation to Advocates for Urban Agriculture, to whom he prepped and distributed 100 grow kits.
