Vancouver’s proximity to nature provides unique access to fresh foraged ingredients, such as mushrooms.
Foraging is more than just harvesting from the land: it’s an ethical practice rooted in sustainability, seasonality, and respect for the complex ecosystem in which the foraged ingredients are found. Since autumn in Vancouver is a peak season to harvest mushrooms, now is a good time to start thinking about ways to experience the region’s rich biodiversity.
Guided Foraging Tours
Photo: A Taste of Nature
There are numerous companies in Vancouver that can take you on a guided foraging tour. A Taste of Nature offers daily eco-tours through incredible Stanley Park, providing an immersive sense of the land and its ingredients. Heather Pelletier, lead tour guide, naturalist, and wild food expert, will take you for a walk in the forest, as well as on the beach with pauses at each location for “Forest to Table” tastings. You’ll sample wild mushrooms with sea asparagus on Yukon sourdough, smoked salmon three ways, spruce tip tea, a seafood platter, and forest berry tarts on a hazenult crust with wild rose petals. Heather will talk about the past and present of the place, in addition to the sourcing of ingredients, making the tour both educational and delicious. Tours run daily from 11:30am to 1:30pm (minimum 5 people, maximum 15; $150 per person).
Swallow Tail Culinary Adventures, owned and operated by Robin Kort (chef, sommelier, and forager), prides themselves on their locavore knowledge as well as collaborations with other chefs and food and beverage experts. They offer Wild Mushroom Field Trips, which will take you through a local forested area (exact location announced the week before the tour) where you’ll learn from an expert myco-guide on how to identify wild mushrooms such as wild oyster, honey, chanterelle, and porcini. As this is not a harvesting or cooking tour, the trip will focus on habitat and ethical/sustainable harvesting. The tours (September to early December) run Saturdays and Sundays at 10am and 12:30pm (2-hour duration; $59.58 per adult, $16 per child 5-12).
They also lead occasional Wild Mushroom Trips in Whistler (October 12 at 12:30pm and 13 at 10am; 3.5-hour duration; $79 per adult; $25 per child 5-12) and Maple Ridge (October 1 at 5pm and 19 at 10:30am and 1pm; 2-hour duration; $79 per adult; $20 per child 5-12).
Finally, you can also book a Sea Foraging Adventure during which chef Robin Kort will talk about harvesting safely and sustainably local seafood, such as sea cucumbers and geoduck, and cooking techniques. The event includes foraged dashi chowder and a seaweed tasting. The next tour takes place September 14 at noon (2-hour duration; $100.75 per adult, $25 per child 5-12).
The Vancouver Mycological Society (VMS) is a great organization for connecting with fellow mushroom enthusiasts. They periodically hold workshops, as well as organize field trips (e.g., Manning Park Foray September 13-15). They host an Annual VMS Fall Mushroom Show at VanDusen Botanical Garden (October 12 from 10am to 5pm) in which they have mushroom identification education, books, and talks.
Foraged Mushroom Vendors
Photo: Vancouver Farmers Markets
If you’re looking to purchase wild mushrooms and other foraged ingredients, visit a local Farmers Market. Vendors that specialize in foraging include Wild Foraged, which engages in ethical/sustainable foraging of mushrooms like morels and chanterelles as well as flora like fiddleheads; and Your Wildest Foods, which sells mushrooms like matsutake and greens such as sea asparagus and nettles. Make sure to check the vendor listing for each market before going.
Restaurants Showcasing Foraged Ingredients
Photo: Botanist
Vancouver restaurants and other food and drink establishments have a deep commitment to the local and sustainable. Many chefs/restaurateurs forge bonds with local producers and foragers, putting wild ingredients centre stage on their menus. With all these restaurants, the menus change with seasonality and availability.
Chef Hector Laguna at Botanist at the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel has a love for Pacific Northwest ingredients, cultivating community and crafting beautiful plates with his careful sourcing of produce, seafood, and meat. Even the dinner menu categories—“Graze” and “Hook, Hunt, and Harvest”—evidence his culinary ethos. For example, his current dinner menu features hand-cut tagliatelle with foraged mushrooms, mushroom “soil,” and crispy piave; a butter poached halibut with morels, English peas, favas, and dark chicken jus; and a cabbage roll with wild mushrooms, kombu, and homemade kimchi.
The cocktails—presided over by Grant Sceney (Creative Beverage Director)—show an equal attention to locality, such as in the Beekeeper, with bourbon, honey, lemon, candy cap mushrooms, and yellow chartreuse; and the Botanist Marine Martini with a dry gin blend, house vermouth, kombu, chive oil, and sea asparagus.
The Acorn, Vancouver’s acclaimed vegetarian and vegan restaurant, celebrates not only plant-based eating, but also local sourcing. They have formed close relationships with a variety of local harvesters and foragers, including Lance Wildcraft, Your Wildest Foods, North Pacific Kelp, and Vancouver Island Sea Salt. They have a daily Harvest dish, which spotlights the freshest farmed and foraged ingredients. The rest of the menu equally showcases seasonal local cooking, including in morels with hop shoot and nettle pisou, Cropthorne Farm beans, greens, and Heidi cheese; and turnips with heritage corn grits, corn and “nduja” sauce, oyster mushrooms, and turnip top chimichurri; and smoked mushroom pate with preserved mushroom gelee, house pickles, hot mustard, and potato chips.
Photo: The Acorn
The team at Published on Main are deeply passionate about foraging, heading to the woods as well as around the city to harvest ingredients that can be used at the restaurant. What they bring back is often preserved through drying, pickling, and salting to be used later in food, desserts, and cocktails. In addition, they champion local producers on their menu. Chef Gus Stieffenhofer-Brandson creates refined plates that showcase natural flavours, such as baby gem with elderflower and a fines herbes dressing; chanterelle cavatelli with smoked celeriac, truffle, and poached egg; and chicken liver with spekulatius, rose, and rosehip.
There are many ways to enjoy foraged ingredients in Vancouver!
