DeMartino believes they are at the very tip of an industry that’s in its nascent stage. “If you look at a picture of a skyscraper that’s overflowing with greens, and it’s providing this abundance for the surrounding urban environment—that’s a picture of sustainability,” he says. “But then if you take it a step further and use the readily available technologies, what you have is an environmentally friendly, nutrient dense type of produce that, in a very short amount of time, anybody can farm, anywhere.”

Chef Tara Norvell, who currently has a dinner residency at Honey’s in Bushwick, has been a champion of the project since its basement days. “After cooking and eating Smallhold mushrooms for the past five years, I feel like I’m just starting to scratch the surface of their culinary potential,” she says. “It’s limitless! I love grilling the blue oysters; the pink and yellow oysters are stunning showstoppers and have distinct and delicious flavors. All of them are amazing to make a broth. The lion’s mane is my favorite, it’s so much fun to work with and eat. I’ve made Bolognese, fried “nuggets,” tamales, chocolate cake…”

Though he quickly became a mushroom fanatic, reading up on mycology and becoming versed in the vast, and (largely untapped), mushroom kingdom, it was Norvell who turned on a light switch for DeMartino in terms of how he viewed mushrooms as food. “If you look at the food pyramid, you don’t see mushrooms on it. You just have everything that’s mandated by the FDA, the USDA, from, like, the 1970s,” he says. “And Tara said, mushrooms basically go around the pyramid. And they also do that on a menu—they can be the center of the plate or go well in an Alfredo.”

Working with chefs is the highlight of DeMartino’s job. “Mainly because the feedback we get about our produce is the most valuable thing—it has guided our intuition,” he says. But to realize Smallhold’s true potential, they want to feed the entire country. “There are so many reasons why mushrooms are the produce they are today, and I think that people are only just beginning to realize what sort of power they have. The chefs are awesome, but they’re in a part of Brooklyn, and it’s not somewhere in the middle of the country or at the bottom of the country. If we can’t reach the cook at home, then I don’t think we’ll have done our job.”

Norvell agrees: “Real food for everyone,” she says. “It seems simple, but capitalism has leached into every part of our food system and I believe in a future where everyone can have access to real food. Smallhold is disrupting the industry by creating a completely new design. More importantly, they aren’t just giving people direct access to real food, but the nutritional value of adding fungi to your daily diet is a type of health insurance on its own.”

Further Reading

CANADA'S FIRST VERTICAL MUSHROOM FARM GROWS ON ARTIFICIAL "TREES"

PARIS HAS A NEW UNDERGROUND – A MASSIVE FARM FOR MUSHROOMS AND VEGGIES

