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How mycotourism in Quebec is serving up delicious morsels from the forest with a side of ecological appreciation.
It’s September. A sign stuck in the lawn next to the walkway up to Côté Est, a restaurant in rural Quebec, reads, “Le Mois du Champignon.” It’s Mushroom Month inside this grand, four-storey ranch house with five dormers and a wraparound veranda overlooking the south shore of the St. Lawrence River.
As I make my way to the entrance, I see a second sign hung with a length of string beside the door, which illustrates a self-guided touring route with 17 locations and 25 participating restaurants called “Circuit du Mois du Champignon.”
I’m at stop number three, Kamouraska, the town where Côté Est is just one of seven restaurants, attractions, and activities. The other 16 locations stretch an hour’s drive east and west along the river and half an hour inland from Kamouraska.
The month-long celebration of everything fungi in the Kamouraska region is just one of hundreds of mycotourisme activities across Quebec ranging from seasonal dishes at restaurants to foraging outings. And it’s part of a worldwide trend. Undoubtedly, foraging for edible wild mushrooms has always been a human activity, but attracting tourists to the practice is relatively new. While countries like Spain and Mexico are leading the way because of the sheer variety of habitats and deeply rooted traditional knowledge in those countries, Canada — Quebec in particular — is quickly developing as a mycotourism hotspot.
Interest in mushrooms in Quebec is, well, mushrooming. Mushroom Month grew out of the Kamouraska Forest Mushroom Festival founded in 2015. By 2020, a group called the Kamouraska Mycology Circle formed as an active community of forest fungi fans. The group became the 14th to be affiliated with the Fédération québécoise des Groups de Mycologues (the Quebec Federation of Mycological Groups.)
Certainly, tasting fresh mushrooms prepared at their best is part of the draw. But I think for many of us, there’s an intrigue to the mushrooms themselves, and a desire to learn about the strange and ancient fruit of a life form that is neither flora nor fauna, and that has thrived on Earth for an estimated one billion years.
Walking in, I find a boutique with locally brewed and distilled beverages, specialized cookbooks dedicated to mushroom gastronomy, fungi-themed t-shirts, and unusual foods. One such product is particularly difficult to imagine consuming — maple syrup with lobster mushrooms. (What does that even taste like, I wonder. Would I pour it on my pancakes?)
Intrigued, I continue through the shop and head cautiously into the restaurant. I am greeted by Sébastien Beaulieu, named on the restaurant website as “Maître d’ and man of contrasts” who greets me with a tray of wild mushroom arancini balls. Traditionally, these Italian spheres of rice are stuffed with mozzarella or ragu meat sauce, rolled in bread crumbs, and deep fried. To prepare their version, Côté Est substitutes barley for rice and replaces the cheese or meat with wild mushroom stuffing. One bite through the crispy coating into the savoury umami center confirms this version is at least the equal of the traditional preparation.
“We’re serving those arancini at a brewery, too,” says Beaulieu. “We’re making 20,000 corndogs and 15,000 of these arancini. That’s what we’re doing when we’re closed.” I find it hard to get my head around how many kilometres of forest must be traipsed to forage enough mushrooms for 15,000 arancini balls.
Next I meet my server, Nicholas Belanger, who grew up in Kamouraska. He proudly shows me Côté Est’s special mushroom month menu where all six courses feature fungi, including mussels with Quebec truffle oil, seal with morels, and pear with black walnut and mushroom marmalade. Munching mushroom dishes is just the beginning of fungi fun during Mois du Champignon. For those who want a deeper dive into the world of mushrooms, the forest itself can be part of the mycostourism experience. Côté Est extends its offerings every Sunday from mid-July to mid-September with the “Mycomigrator Experience,” or as Beaulieu puts it, “expeditions in the woods.” Participants head into the forest with owner and chef Kim Côté in a four-wheel drive vehicle in search of edible mushrooms. In the wilderness, Côté prepares a “gastronomic lunch” incorporating mushrooms and other forest flavours foraged by participants.
Urban restaurants are just as keen to tap into the mycotourism trend. At La Tanière — Québec City’s two-star Michelin restaurant — chef François-Emmanuel Nicol says, “We collaborate with five foragers on a weekly basis to curate our menu. They gather wild mushrooms and plants for our dishes.”
The benefits of mycotourism are numerous and varied. Restaurants like Côté Est can expand their businesses away from the kitchen and dining room into the wider community. Restaurants like La Tanière support a network of foragers. Patrons — from those who simply dine on wild mushroom dishes to the more adventurous who head out on foraging missions — are recipients of environmental education.
On his mushroom foraging outings, chef Côté teaches participants about forest flora and fauna, as well as local natural and human history. Guests learn about the networks of root-like filaments called hyphae that spread through the forest floor, delivering water and nutrients to trees in exchange for carbon that the trees manufacture through photosynthesis. In addition, mycotourists learn the importance of protecting large stands of wild forest where fungi play critical roles in helping forests thrive. It's a symbiotic relationship, where fungi — a ubiquitous, but often unnoticed lifeform living on and beneath the forest floor — provides nutrients and water to trees in exchange for carbon.
For Belanger, my arancini-toting server, fungi foraging and feasting reflects a way of life in the place he loves. “I travelled and came back,” he says. “Life here is slower. There’s no traffic. You have the mushrooms, the birdlife.” I’m not surprised when he tells me that — even before he started working there — his family had a standing reservation at Côté Est every Friday night. “Here, it’s like a family. It’s about friendship. And it’s about being involved in something bigger than you.”
