Cooking, foraging have their place at Santa Cruz Mountain Mushroom Festival – even as interest in psychoactives blooms

Not too long ago, a mushroom festival would have been almost entirely a culinary event, a broad array of cooking demos, tasting samples, tips on foraging and information on identifying and finding exotic or highly sought-after species of delicious fungi.

This weekend’s Santa Cruz Mountain Mushroom Festival at Roaring Camp in Felton is all of that — those who love to find, prepare and eat mushrooms will certainly find their tribe there. But this festival is something more as well.

Mushrooms have, of course, been used for purposes other than food for generations. But largely because psychedelic mushrooms (psilocybin) have been and are still illegal on a federal level, mushrooms used for medicinal or therapeutic purposes have been buried in taboo for decades. 

That’s gradually beginning to change. There is as of yet no open market for psychoactive or medicinal fungi — and, it almost goes without saying, that this mushroom festival or any such festival is not a place to find psilocybin. But the demand for information about the effects of psilocybin and other forms of medicinal fungi is higher than it’s been for years. 

Ian Garrone is the CEO of Far West Fungi, the Moss Landing mushroom retailer and the coordinating organization behind the Santa Cruz Mountain Mushroom Festival. He said that the festival and his industry generally have begun to divide the realm of mushrooms into “functional” mushrooms — that would be the strictly culinary kind and those that might have some other health benefits —  and “medicinal” mushrooms, which would include psilocybin and related psychoactive compounds.

“The [interest in] psychoactives that we’ve seen the last couple of years,” he said, “coupled with the kind of mushrooms that are more of a medicine, is definitely taking a little bit more shape and movement.”

The festival will have a party atmosphere with live music, food and beer and wine. But it will also have a wide array of demonstrations, panel discussions, lectures and informational sessions on foraging, cultivation, cooking and other aspects of the growing world of mycology. And that includes open and honest talk about psychedelics. The schedule of the event features talks and discussions about the latest research on psychedelics.

“The psilocybin talk is really more about the microdosing scene,” said Garrone, “more about the [cognitive] part of it and using it as a kind of medicine. People want to know more about the legalities of it. And I’m seeing a lot of people trying to understand, y’know, ‘I used to take it when I was 15 or so, but I’m 60 now and thinking of taking it again.’ So people are very interested.”

This weekend’s festival debuted as an annual event last year. Garrone said that the 2024 festival attracted about 3,000 visitors over its two days. 

“It’s a very social event,” he said. “It rained on us last year on Saturday. And I was surprised to see how many smiling faces there were, even with the rain. Everybody seemed to be geared up for it with all their mushroom gear. Most of the people I talked to who were there were really just very happy about being part of the scene.”

On the culinary front, the festival offers up a peek into the wide world of edible mushrooms that isn’t readily apparent in most markets. “We have Michelin-star chefs that are going to be there who are just passionate about wild foraging,” Garrone said. “It’s always fun to see just where they take things.”

Even though it serves a purpose to divide the fungi world into “functional” and “medicinal” mushrooms, the gray areas between them are there. A kind of a mushroom known as lion’s mane is being hyped for medicinal properties for beneficial effects on mood and cognition. But, said Garrone, it’s also becoming more popular in the kitchen.

“It’s taking on a life of its own, as a kind of replacement for crab or other types of seafood. You can really make these interesting crab-cake-like things with them. Or you can squash them down and make a kind of steak out of them,” he said. “A lot of people add beet juice to it, and then sear it. It really does fool the eye and texturally, it comes off as a kind of meat.”

Other fungi are merely a curiosity, such as cordyceps, a kind of parasitic fungi that serves as the “bad guy” in the HBO apocalyptic series “The Last of Us.” “That’s like a whole mushrooms-as-monster situation,” said Garrone. “People kinda dig that whole cult.”

As for psychedelics, Garrone said that the festival is “definitely a place to learn,” but not a scene for party trippers. Garrone said that the festival does not encourage people coming to the event dosed on psychedelics. (The Santa Cruz City Council voted in 2020 to decriminalize use of some natural psychedelics like psilocybin, but Roaring Camp is outside Santa Cruz’s city limits, so that doesn’t apply.) But the grounds will include areas where people concerned about the effects of mushrooms can go for help.

“We do have spots where people can go in the festival that they know that they’re safe,” said Garrone. “And if they’re having any issues with [psychedelics], they’re are people on staff to take care of them. No judgment, just a safe place to be.”

The Santa Cruz Mountain Mushroom Festival takes place Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Roaring Camp Railroads in Felton. Tickets are $50 per day, plus $15 parking. Children 12 and under are free. 

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