Mushroom Culinary Arts
NAMA‘s Mycophagist‘s Kitchen is committed to the delicious, safe, and interesting preparation of wild and cultivated mushrooms. We offer programs in mushroom cookery and preservation which draw from a wide variety of ethnicities and styles.
We promote and share knowledge of all aspects of mycophagy, including cooking demos, recipes, medicinal preparations (teas and tinctures), interviews with mushroom chefs, and tips on handling the variety of flavors, textures, and toxicities of wild mushrooms.
Check back regularly for updated culinary resources:
Check back regularly for updated culinary resources:
Meet the Culinary Arts Committee
Culinary Committee Chair
Julie Schreiber @chezjuliesconsultingwinemaker
Northern California
Julie has been collecting, cooking, and eating mushrooms for 30 years. As a professionally trained chef, she has been teaching others about cooking and eating mushrooms for a significant portion of those three decades. In addition to her personal passion for good food and cooking, her formal training in the food and wine industry includes degrees in Hotel Restaurant and Travel Administration from the University of Massachusetts, Culinary Arts from the Culinary Institute of America, and a Master’s Degree in Enology from the University of California at Davis.
She has worked as a chef and is currently a professional winemaker. Additionally, she was on the Sonoma County Mycological Association board for 14 years and the lead chef for culinary events and demos at mushroom forays for David Arora, the Sonoma County Mycological Association (SOMA), the Mycological Society of San Francisco, the North American Mycological Association (NAMA), Wild About Mushrooms (WAM), and Relish Culinary Adventures.
She is a business partner in Mycoventures (https://www.mycoventures.com/wam), a company that organizes local and international mushroom forays. She organizes the events, helps lead the forays, and teach people how to cook cultivated and wild mushrooms.
Most recently she has become the Culinary Committee Chair for the North American Mycological Association (NAMA).
Visit her webpage at: https://chezjulies.com/
Zachary Williams-Hunter @the_fungivore
Oaxaca, Mexico
Zachary (@chefmazi) has worked in kitchens and food service since 1992, starting washing dishes for his high school kitchen during his lunch break through running the kitchen at his own restaurant (ul.te.ri.or. restaurant and bar) with business partner Tighe Melville in Santa Cruz, CA 2016-2017. His last efforts in the kitchen was cooking for immersive retreats, where he experimented with cooking one cuisine for the entire week: he has taken deep dives through Mexican, Oaxacan, Spanish, Israeli/Palestinian, Thai, and Pacific Northwest, with brief forays into Vietnamese, Greek, Singaporean, Portuguese and more.
Though they intended to move to Oaxaca in April of 2020, instead his partner (now fiancé) Kim Hunter and he ended up staying in Northern Thailand for the pandemic, finally returning to the US in August of 2021. Working with local grandmothers, he learned the depths of Northern Thai Cuisine, and wrote a cookbook on the same.
Since 2001, he has been an avid mushroom hunter, and became known as The Mushroom Chef, and has been presenting a speaking at Mycological events and camps (especially SOMA camp) since 2013, exploring the science of cooking and eating mushrooms, a study known as mycophagy.
Kim and Zachary moved to Oaxaca, Mexico in March of 2022. They lead mushroom retreats there with their Zapotec partners Celestino Mendez and Dr. Samuel Lazo This year they are exploring dyeing with mushrooms with Alissa Allen and Cheshire Mayrsohn.
Spike Mikulski @1wd2ef3rg4th5yj6uk7il
Rhode Island
Spike is the Executive Chef at Pot au Feu Bistro in Providence, Rhode Island where he gets to prepare & serve foraged ingredients you can’t find on any other menu in New England.
Spike is Rhode Islands first mushroom forager approved by the state to sell wild mushrooms commercially & teaches the state’s certification program once a year for those also interested in foraging mushrooms for local restaurants and markets.
During rainy season, Spike enjoys studying the Amanitaceae, some of which make up his top ten edibles. Unfortunately for Rhode Island, there are NO Amanita approved for sale, so you will not find them on the menu at Pot au Feu.
He does, however, get to utilize his experience as an Amanita Expert & Northeast Specialist for the ‘Poisons Help; Emergency Identification for Mushrooms & Plants’ Facebook group as an identifier. (https://www.facebook.com/groups/144798092849300/).
In the off-season, he has taken a fascination to learning Food Molds and Plant Pathogens commonly seen in the modern kitchen, observing occurences like “sour-rot” on sweet potato caused by Geotrichum candidum (which is utilized in cheese making) or garlic bulbs being parasitized by Penicillium corymbiferum (known for it’s antibiotic properties).
Spike has a few of his dishes featured on Instagram at @1wd2ef3rg4th5yj6uk7il
He also has some educational Amanita Identification videos on his YouTube Channel at https://youtube.com/user/Seditious100.
Robert Courteau @thinkfungi
Ottawa, Canada
Robert is a former chef, educator, President of the Ottawa Mycological Society and creator of Think Fungi, a non-profit focused on fungi-related events and courses. Robert is our Canadian culinary ombudsman!
Robert began foraging mushrooms for the first time in 2010 as a chef in Europe, and it completely changed his outlook on life.
Having retired from the kitchen in 2013, Robert has been focused on his love of mushrooms and has been active in bringing the world of fungi to the masses through his events and courses on just about anything fungi-related.
Donna R Kurt
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Donna Kurt is a retired telecommunications engineering technologist. In retirement, she volunteers on Boards of Paddle Canada, Paddle Manitoba, and Manitoba Mushroom Society, as well as Winnipeg Folk Festival security folk and BellMTS Volunteers, and leads and instructs canoe trips for Nature Manitoba and Wilds Of Manitoba. It is wilderness canoeing in the mid-80s that kindled Donna’s interest in the wonder of fungi.
She is studying towards a BSc in Biology at the University of Winnipeg, focussing more on mycology in degree completion.
Each summer Donna leads a challenging 5 day wilderness canoe trip to Nature Manitoba’s off-grid Mantario Wilderness cabin located in pristine boreal mixed forest, foraging and identifying a wide variety of mushroom, lichen and plant species. Participants also become certified in canoeing and portaging skills. Donna’s meal planning and preparation incorporates foraged edibles such as wild blueberries, chanterelles, pig ears and lobsters.
Donna’s passion is sharing mushrooms, recipes, spawn, spores, identification, cultivation, foraging, photography/filming and leading knowledge and skills. She has been presenting mushroom and plant workshops and forays for various organizations for over 2 decades.
Donna has been a NAMA member since 2023 and is involved in the Culinary Arts and Club Relations committees and promotes NAMA in Manitoba.
Nicholas Prieto
Born and raised in Miami, FL, Nicholas Prieto is a classically trained chef, product developer, and permaculture enthusiast with over 16 years of experience, including work in Michelin star restaurants and under some of the top chefs in the country. As the founder of Red Flower Fungi, he combines his Cuban heritage with his passion for gourmet mushrooms, fermentation techniques like koji, and tropical fruits to create innovative products such as Leoncito Cafecito, a Lion’s Mane-infused Cuban espresso, and Umami Sazon, a mushroom seasoning for everyday dishes. He also leads Cubansis Café, a pop-up experience that brings people together around wellness, culture, and mycofunctional foods and beverages.
Nicholas is an experienced mushroom cultivator and processor with a commitment to sustainable agriculture. His work in the medical cannabis industry, including his role as Florida’s first Edibles Chef/Director at Curaleaf, adds to his expertise in plant-based wellness and product innovation. With a deep love for tropical fruits and fungi, Nicholas’s mission is to raise the bar for both flavor and function in the culinary world. Through workshops, pop-ups, and collaborations, he inspires others to explore the potential of fungi, tropical ingredients, and sustainable practices for flavor, health, and sustainability.
A Word of Caution:
You should not eat any mushroom that you cannot identify with 100% accuracy.
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