SOMERVILLE, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — A shop in Somerville has a wide variety of mushrooms on offer, and its owner shared some insight into wild mushroom foraging.
Tyler Akabane is a mushroom enthusiast and the owner of The Mushroom Shop on Medford St.
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He said that the mushrooms they have for sale have “a wide variety of flavors and textures that are beyond what most people associate" with the fungi.
And the types of culinary mushrooms they offer at the shop change all the time, he added.
“I want to say we definitely have the widest mushroom selection of any grocery store in New England.”
Tyler shared that summer is a great time to forage for wild mushrooms.
“Any place where there are trees, there are mushrooms that have friendly relationships with those trees. Anywhere where there’s grasslands, there are going to be mushrooms that are absorbing and digesting dried grass.”
Basically, “anywhere where there’s wildlife, there’s mushrooms,” he said.
Tyler recently spoke at the Boston Public Library in South Boston, teaching people about seasonal, edible mushrooms in the area and advising potential foragers not to eat something if they don’t know what it is.
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Another piece of foraging advice from Tyler was to be aware of state rules and regulations on where you can and cannot forage.
When he’s not at the shop, Tyler can be found with fellow members of the Boston Mycological Club.
“There’s definitely an underground mushroom community that feels like it’s less so underground now than ever before,” he said.
“I feel like mushrooms are really having a moment.”
WBZ NewsRadio's James Rojas (@JamesRojasMMJ) reports.
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