NYC Food Film Festival - Know Your Mushrooms

by Alex Van Buren, Posted Jun 16th 2009 @ 5:00PM

"Hey, hon, let's go see a film about mushrooms tonight."

The words could stop even the most ardent foodie dead in her tracks. Mushrooms -- whether parsed in dry botanical terms in dusty old textbooks or discussed manically by hippies in their "magical" incarnation (click above) -- hold little intrigue for many of us. (Not to mention that whole "Alice in Wonderland thing.")

After an event held by the NYC Food Film Festival on Sunday where we were feted with 'shroom dishes of every stripe (shrimp-stuffed morels; shiitake ice cream ... anyone?) and watched a hilarious film titled "Know Your Mushrooms" (find local screenings here), we consider ourselves schooled. Mycologists, evidently, are ready for their closeups.

Photos, the Flaming Lips and magic mushrooms after the jump.

Public chef Brad Farmerie holding his porcini-dusted popcorn.
Photo: Alex Van Buren

Brad Farmerie of restaurant Public (right) was responsible for the decadent eats, which included porcini-dusted popcorn, abalone mushroom ceviche with miso eggplant and ginger ponzu sauce, white chocolate and truffle lollipops, and -- our favorite -- shiitake mushroom ice cream with fudge cake and miso caramel. (We're going to chase him down for the recipe of that last one; savory ice creams are the bomb.)

Harry Hawk of Water Taxi Beach, a co-sponsor of the event, provided mushroom rib-eye cheesesteaks. They were just barely warm by the time we got our hands on them, but still tasty.

As for the film, these guys are aiming for the 20- and 30-something demographic in major way -- from the opening credits of tiny dwarfs bumbling curiously about a Snow White-like forest populated with pastel 'shrooms to the oh-so-familiar strains of the Flaming Lips yodeling "Is it chemically derived?" during a paean to magic mushrooms.

Abalone mushroom ceviche with miso eggplant and ginger ponzu sauce.
Photo: Alex Van Buren

The premise of the film is, of course, to showcase the humble mushroom and its admirers. It follows four days of the Telluride, Colo., Mushroom festival and features two exquisitely eccentric mycologists -- film consultant Gary Lincoff and silver-braided Larry Evans, spied at one point with a parrot on his shoulder.

Punctuated with retro cartoons and TV ads (one warning about the dangers of the death cap mushroom, which filmgoers should now be one step closer to recognizing) are informative bits about 'shrooms: Oyster mushrooms may be able to clean up oil spills; Andrew Weil talks about the potential curative properties of shiitakes; the cordyceps variety eats ants whole. Yikes.

Filmgoers listen to organizers Harry Hawk and George Motz. Photo: Alex Van Buren

In the course of the film, Larry -- after whipping up a few wild mushroom dishes in a friend's kitchen that had us drooling -- admits that he perhaps has a "mycocentric" view of the universe. The film follows that lead when delving into the notion of magic mushrooms, ruminating that one who consumes them enters a state of "ecological grace."

It counters at every turn with a self-conscious sense of humor, however, as when Gary (in the clip above) admits that while 'shrooming with strangers they asked him to "leave the planet with them" and he graciously declined only because "they didn't seem to have a real good game plan."

We left the event impressed by the prowess of the humble mushroom -- though not, admittedly, as much so as the aforementioned experts. We're not sure we'll ever get to their level of myco-mania, on this planet or any other.

Filed Under: Television/Film
Tags: Gary Lincoff, GaryLincoff, George Motz, GeorgeMotz, Harry Hawk, HarryHawk, mushrooms, mycologists, NYC Food Film Festival, NycFoodFilmFestival