As featured on the Travel Channel’s Bizarre Foods, Asheville’s troubadour of the toadstool and the city’s pioneering local foods restaurant team up once again on a quest for the edible and incredible wild mushroom. Fragrant chanterelles in sumptuous duxelles, fungi faux “squid ink,” even mushroom “mocha” ice cream: it all depends on what we find!
That morning, we’ll explore nearby woods, filling our baskets. Then we’ll reconvene in the evening to enjoy our catch of the day. It’s an unforgettable experience in high-class survival!
$75 includes guided mushroom hunt and four-course dinner (add $25 for wine pairings). A longer workshop will be offered the following weekend. For more info, see here. To register, call 828-252-4162 or visit www.marketplace-restaurant.com.
William Dissen, Executive Chef and Owner of The Marketplace, has loved nature and the outdoors since his childhood in West Virginia. A graduate of The Culinary Institute of America, Chef Dissen focuses on farm and forest-to-table ingredients, supporting sustainable agriculture with locally-sourced cuisine.
Alan Muskat, epicure of the obscure, has persuaded thousands to sample rather than trample the toadstools. Author of Wild Mushrooms: A Taste of Enchantment, he's popped up at The Biltmore Estate, on PBS Folkways, and in Country Living magazine. Visit him online at www.alanmuskat.com. When it comes to bringing out the fun in fungi, he's the champignion.
“However they may be served and eaten, mushrooms you must make yours at any cost...
Learn to like them; WILL to like them, or else your brief sojourn on this earth
will be a wretched waste.”
E.R. Pennell, The Delights of Delicate Eating