By Pepper Fisher
PORT ANGELES – The City of Port Angeles will be hosting the first-ever Port Angeles Fungi Festival this October, celebrating mushrooms of the Pacific northwest.
The man behind the event is David Rogers, who grows gourmet varieties commercially, including shiitakes, oyster, lion’s mane and more, under the name Maddie’s Mushrooms.
Rogers says his first festival is scheduled for October 15 at the Red Lion Hotel on the waterfront, and he has a of full day of guests and presenters lined up.
“Lowell Dietz is a local mycologist. He’s a very good educator and so, he’s going to be doing a cultivation presentation and kind of get people’s feet wet with how to grow mushrooms at home, if that’s something that they’re interested in. Langdon Cook is an author who is going to present on the foraging side of it, and a patch-to-plate type of a presentation. And then, Howard Sprouse does a lot of remediation type of work. I mean, there’s a lot of exciting things going on with species that they’re finding can help decompose plastics, and things like that. We are still hoping that the Seattle Truffle Dog Company has some people to send over. We’ve been talking to them on a regular basis. And then, we also have a trio from the Port Townsend area, doing a presentation on micro-dosing psilocybin.”
It would be difficult to find a better place to live if you’re a fan of hunting for wild mushrooms than western Washington, and local chefs have always found ways to work them into their seasonal menus. Rogers says his festival has gotten the attention of some of our local restauranteurs.
“We think that gourmet mushrooms are extremely important, and the restaurants in the community seem to feel the same way. So, we’ve spoken with multiple restaurants who are excited to try and add some extra mushroom specials on the menu during that weekend, and really emphasize how important and how delicious mushrooms are. So yeah, we think that the dining side of it is going to be a really big push, and something that we really hope can get the whole community excited.”
Rogers has every intention of turning this into an annual event that grows into something too big for a hotel to hold but, for now, he’s excited to get the Port Angeles Fungi Festival off the ground on Saturday, October 15 at the Red Lion Hotel.
Rogers expects to have tickets available at Eventbrite.com by the first week in August at $25 each, and t-shirts will also be available to commemorate the event.
In the meantime, check out his Facebook page called Maddie’s Mushrooms, named for his daughter Madison, for updates and to see some really amazing mushrooms available for sale.