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Business & Tech

Demystifying Mushrooms is a Mission for San Bruno Couple

In business for 25 years, the owners of Far West Fungi have introduced fresh exotic fresh mushrooms to many Bay Area cooks.

Ever wonder how to use those strange-looking mushrooms at farmers' markets and specialty grocery stores? The ones with the odd names, odd colors and the even odder shapes?

If so, you might want to talk to San Bruno residents John and Toby Garrone, owners of Far West Fungi, a 60,000-square-foot organic mushroom farm in Moss Landing (Monterey Bay). The Garrones will gladly give you a recipe or two and tell you everything you ever wanted to know about their specialty mushrooms.

And don’t worry about finding them. Most days, the Garrones are at a famers' market near you.

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In fact, they sell their specialty mushrooms—primarily, shitakes, king trumpets, tree oysters, bear’s heads and maitakes—at 12 farmers' markets a week, including five on the Peninsula.

Typically, they’re the only mushroom vendor at a market, so they’re easy to spot. But don’t expect to see them together. There’s an equal division of labor in the Garrone family, so the couple splits farmers' market duties evenly between them, with frequent assist from helpers, including family members and friends.

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“John and I have been partners all along,” Toby said.

Changing Customers' Palates

The Garrones got into the mushroom business in the early ‘80s when most people, if they ate mushrooms at all, favored the ubiquitous white button ones.

“Consumers weren’t ready for exotic mushrooms when we began,” said Toby Garrone at Far West Fungi’s new 3,600-square-foot distribution center and commercial kitchen in South San Francisco.

“They would buy the button ones, and maybe see someone else buy some exotic ones and step up and decide to try them.

“Or we’d tell them that the king trumpet ones were sweet tasting and very good, and put one in their bag to try. A lot of people wouldn’t have tried a different mushroom if they weren’t given a sample to get them started. It’s how we began introducing people to our mushrooms—and it’s still the way we do it today.”

The timing for exotic mushrooms couldn’t have been better. The Bay Area was undergoing a food revolution, with shoppers increasingly interested in buying fresh, organic food from local farmers.

“People had gotten much more into cooking and making more interesting and creative food, and specialty mushrooms were part of that,” Toby said.

The San Francisco Store

The growth of the Garrones’ mushroom business coincided with the renovation of the San Francisco Ferry Building, and with that came the possibility of opening up a store inside.

“It was John’s idea,” Toby said. “But after going back and forth about it, we decided against it at first,” she said. 

But then, by chance one of their four sons, Ian, a San Diego State University graduate then working for a commercial mushroom grower in Watsonville, found himself out of a job when his employer's business went under.

“We talked to Ian,” Toby said, “and he agreed to manage the store. We couldn’t have done it without him.”

Today, the small Ferry Building store, with Ian as manager, is an important part of the Garonnes’ operation. Depending on the season, the shop features an assortment of wild mushrooms—porcinis, chanterelles and morels, for example— as well foraging books, mushroom-related cookbooks and mushroom farms for people who want to grow their own mushrooms.

“The store gives us an opportunity to offer a full array of mushrooms, not just the ones we produce ourselves,” John said.

It also gives the Garrones an place to sell a variety of mushroom products, some of which they can now test at their new South San Francisco facility to see if they’re commercially viable. When Patch visited them recently, among the products under scrutiny were lemon and dill marinated mushrooms and oyster mushroom pâté.

On Saturdays, John continues to man Far West’s outdoor mushroom stall. “Farmers' markets are still the best way for us to reach the most number of people,” he said.

Working the Farm

The Garrones grow 700 pounds of mushrooms a week at their Moss Landing facility, located on a bluff overlooking the Pajaro River. It’s cool there and has perfect weather for mushroom growing, John said.

The mushrooms are gown on five-pound blocks of sawdust mixed with crushed oyster shells and organic rice bran. The sawdust mixture is sterilized and then inoculated with mushroom tissue culture.

“At any one time, we have up to 80,000 blocks in incubation or production on any one day,” John said, adding that depending on the type of mushroom involved, it takes up to 13 weeks for the blocks to produce mushrooms.

Kyle Garrone, another one of the Garrones’ sons, who holds a degree in plant biology from UC Davis, works at the mushroom farm trying to improve mushroom yields. “Both Ian and Kyle are in the business, but they have different interests,” John said.

Facing the Competition

The biggest challenge to the Garrones’ business is the influx of shitake mushrooms from China. Shitakes, which make up more than 70 percent of the Garrones’ mushroom production, sell at places like Costco at a fraction of the cost that the Garrones charge. But then, the Garrones say, the Chinese mushrooms aren’t fresh. “They’re partially dried, then treated with some kind of preservative and are at least 10 days old by the time they get to market here,” John said.

“This is what a fresh shitake looks like," Toby added, showing this Patch reporter a Far West-grown shitake.

“It has nice white gills and it has the texture of a marshmallow, soft and fleshy. Next time you go into a grocery store, notice how the Chinese-produced mushroom is closed up and the gills are completely grey.”

So do the Garrones like to eat mushrooms after all these years?

“We’re not tired of them at all,” said Toby, adding that she adds them to stir frys, spaghetti sauces and risottos. “We probably eat more at one sitting than most people do.”

John has a king trumpet mushroom recipe that he’s particularly partial to of late. “Take some king trumpet mushrooms, which are thick and dense with a sweet flavor, and slice them paper thin, with a mandoline if you have one,” he said. “Then sauté them in butter for about five minutes. They come out like chow fun noodles with a mushroom buttery sauce.”

In addition to being at 12 farmers' markets, Far West Fungi mushrooms are available at Whole Foods, Mollie Stone’s, Berkeley Bowl and Rainbow grocery. You can find out more about Far West Fungi at www.farwestfungi.com.

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