12 minute read
EDIBLE INNOVATION
EDIBLE INNOVATION SHAKING THINGS UP
How a star chef went all-in on mushrooms
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STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARK C. ANDERSON
About halfway through a tour of MycoSci’s brand-new mushroom facility in Watsonville, a powerful earthquake shudders through the lab we’re standing in.
The high performance liquid chromatograph-mass spectrometer system quivers. The fancy freeze dryers tremble. Tentacle-like fungi growing on beds of brown rice wave without wind.
One MycoSci team member is smart enough to duck beneath a door frame. The others, owner Dory Ford included, pause only briefly to observe the ground’s grumblings, then resume their discussion of the life-affirming properties of what they’re growing in earnest, namely cordyceps mushrooms.
Perhaps a primary reason they don’t react much is that they’re focused on a tectonic shift of another sort. That shake comes with the hope of impacting bodies, minds and a mushrooming industry in scaleable ways with all sorts of mycelia, psilocybin included.
But first had to come a crisis.
MIND SHIFT
Dory Ford has been a pioneering chef for decades.
When I first encountered him he was helping lead the movement for sustainable sourcing as executive chef for the Monterey Bay Aquarium. He’s also blazed the way on healthy and handmade school lunches and contemporary catering, building a dynasty that, pre-pandemic, included award-winning restaurants to go with a robust event management outfit called Aqua Terra Culinary.
Most meaningfully for this endeavor, he was among the first chefs in this area to understand how deep COVID would cut.
Flashback to February 2020, or in perceived time 3,000 years ago, weeks before closures descended.
Ford saw enough cancellations from clients and food festivals that he shut Point Pinos Grill and laid off his team long before Governor Gavin Newsom ordered a shelter in place, to preserve resources and to get his people to the front of the unemployment line.
“This isn’t like a fire or hurricane or other weather/earthly event,” he said on March 19, 2020. “That’s why everyone bought toilet paper and water—it’s what you do in a disaster. This is different. This is a complete mind shift.”
How right he was became quickly apparent—and now provides poetic context for the different shift he’s anticipating. It also triggered a personal reckoning.
“I had a great business and it didn’t exist anymore, which was wrenching,” he says. “After 35 years grinding life away at food service, I had nothing.”
Like so many, he was stuck at home with little to do.
“I tend to be an optimist, and I try to be stoic,” he says. “But when you’re alone by yourself, you can crawl into a dark place. A chef’s jacket can be like a Superman cape. COVID was kryptonite.”
Right around then a person close to him decided she was ready to get off antidepressants, and sought out a psilocybin therapy session in San Francisco. When Ford heard how much it cost—$800 a session for six sessions—he thought, “We can do better than that.”
He acquired therapeutic doses. They took them, went on a bike ride and laid down on the beach cliffs of Seaside and talked about the clouds. When he went looking for more doses to perpetuate therapy, COVID had already snapped the supply chain.
So he ordered a home-grow box off Etsy. While he was waiting for delivery he realized he had much of the equipment and wherewithal to grow some himself.
“Without the primary focus on [cooking], how did I deal with everything? I became captivated in the process of growing mushrooms,” he says. “But it wasn’t
Dory Ford (below) says the idea for his new business was born after the pandemic forced him to close his restaurant and catering company.
HOLiday HOLiday
like I got this ‘aha moment,’ I just went to work and was able to pour my focus into something. When it works—you give them the right love and attention on a daily basis—they’re beautiful. I started referring to them as my children.”
The same intensity he put into sourcing and cheffing came along for the trip. His passion eventually turned to growing cordyceps—the focus for the foreseeable future—because their superpowers aren’t categorized as Schedule 1 drugs by the feds.
“I became fascinated at looking at how [mushrooms] can best be a benefit to people,” he says. “I’ve learned so f---ing much about mycology. It’s definitely been a deep dive, and I ended up in a place I never thought I’d be when I started.”
That place sits one mile from the county border in Watsonville, as close to Ford’s Monterey home base as possible while still residing in Santa Cruz County. That’s one of many decisions designed to prime MycoSci for maximum impact.
Santa Cruz, after all, was the third city in the U.S. to decriminalize psychedelics. The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (or MAPS) made its home on Mission Street in 1986, and stuck around for decades. (It has since moved.) Last year the city council proclaimed April Psychedelic Therapy Awareness Month. And while Watsonville and Santa Cruz are different places, they’re close politically and geographically.
Another strategic decision: the buildout of dozens of individual grow rooms—all climate controlled digitally for “set-it-andforget-it” ease of operation—able to be adapted to any number of mushrooms, including lion’s mane and morels. That allows diverse options in terms of species to be harvested every day of the week in sync with maturation timelines.
“Sometimes I just sit and think,” Ford says. “How do you increase your capacity, realize some efficiencies? I start with a metFelton • Boulder Creek ric, and calculate how many I can realisti- wildrootsmarket.com cally do, then dial in on genetics.”
Another pragmatic play: The recruit- 7 days a week • 9am - 9pm
Healthy Healthy New Year New Year
The team at MycoSci is preparing to grow other types of mindful mushrooms as laws change. (Photos below courtesy Topher Mueller)
ment of research attorney and psilocybin advocate Cassandra Alexander, one of MycoSci’s earliest hires. Her primary charge: studying statutes, regulations and standards at the local, state and federal levels to ensure compliance while tracking the policies and proposed initiatives regarding the legalization of psilocybin. One has passed in Oregon, and others are in process in Washington and Colorado.
“My values align with that of the brand,” she says, “the push for access [for all], and the ability to further study psilocybin to understand all that it has to offer.”
While Ford is firmly focused on cordyceps, he’s also looking ahead.
“Once the laws emerge, we can flip a switch and make some of our rooms grow psilocybin,” he says.
But the biggest strategic detail is using cordyceps as MycoSci’s foundation. Turns out it retails for more than psychedelic fungi.
“We have a full-on superfood mushroom that we can sell for $25 a pound,” Ford says.
While he can unleash a torrent of shroom intel—from the classics (“It’s the largest growing organism on this planet!”) to the more obscure (the differing effects of Golden Teachers and Penis Envy psilocybin strains on the psyche)—some of the tastiest insights involve cordyceps.
These tiny carrot-colored medicinals are said to offer a bundle of benefits beyond the flavor Ford and chef pal Colin Moody prepped for MycoSci’s pitch dinner to potential investors. Those included cordyceps arancini, burrata salads with cordyceps “croutons,” cordyceps soba noodles with Dungeness crab and seared scallops, and cordyceps maple ice cream with cordyceps streusel. Moody’s son Connor, who’s completing a UC Davis degree in plant sciences, works as MycoSci’s lead lab tech.
Traditional Chinese medicine practitioners deploy cordyceps to treat fatigue, kidney disease and sex drive. According to Healthline, they’ve been shown to deliver antioxidants, inhibit tumors, aid people with type 2 diabetes, temper the effects of arrhythmia heart conditions and slow inflammation.
MycoSci touts their glucose-regulating abilities and vein-dilating benefits that decrease blood pressure and increase oxygen absorption, providing energy without all the sugar, jitters or crashes of coffee and energy drinks.
While MycoSci ramps up production and preps plans for retail powders, tea varieties and liquid cultures, its first product is a daily snack supplement that will debut at pop-ups starting in December.
I tried a pack before a workout. The small, thin and lightly seasoned whole mushrooms, freeze-dried (rather than dehydrated) to up bioavailability, were flavorful and easy to eat with a water washdown.
“You don't have to f--- around with them,” Ford says, “They’re delicious all on their own.”
It might’ve been too much time at the laptop learning about cordyceps, but an hour-plus workout seemed to fly by with less heavy breathing than normal.
MYCO EXPLORERS
Pop quiz: What are the four chemicals that make the human brain hum?
Your brain is firing if you said adrenaline, dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin.
Those four are important enough to Ford that he’s hung their molecular diagrams on the walls of the main lab and the upstairs he’s converted into his office and on-site apartment.
Their presence gets at the fundamentals MycoSci wants to flex.
“What we’re dealing with in psychedelics are these four chemicals they’re affecting,” Ford says. “We’re not MycoBuzz or MycoHigh. We’re digging into the science of mushrooms.”
The next hire will be a scientist to direct research development and laboratory operations—and, if Ford has his way, to draft academic papers and grant requests to fund research.
The most recent addition was grow director Michael Bandy. After studying ecology and evolution at UC Santa Cruz, he started growing mushrooms in his basement. Eventually that blossomed into a Persephone RESTAURANT
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He sounds eager to apply his experience in extractions, tinctures and cultivation, but is most stoked about advancing understanding.
“We want to push the science behind mushrooms and make it transparent for people,” he says. “A lot of the information around it isn’t that well-supported by science. I’m motivated to clear up what people understand about mushrooms and dietary supplements that may or may not be true.”
That science happens by way of things like the fancy mass spectrometer system—something normally found in medical examiner labs and drug manufacturing plants.
It allows MycoSci to scope the chemical compound makeup of any given organic item without having to outsource that at great expense and time drain. It can vet their product claims—and check competitors on their own.
It can also flag things like adaptogens (beneficial plant-based ingredients, like ginseng) and what the team calls MOIs, or “molecules of interest.”
“While we’re in there poking around for psilocybin with the spectrometer, I’m pretty sure we’re going to find other helpful compounds,” Ford says. “It allows us to search beyond the obvious.”
Bandy draws a comparison to marijuana research: In early stages, the focus was on THC, but that shifted to CBD and other cannabidiols as their benefits became clearer.
“There’s a ton to learn in this industry,” he says. “It’s so young and new. There are so many species and molecules we haven’t studied that are really beneficial.”
“This is a pretty significant lab—not just for production but as a center of excellence,” adds Chief Operating Officer Topher Mueller. “Technology like the spectrometer is good for us, but down the road will be good for others too.”
“It brings integrity to the industry,” Ford says.
MUSHROOMS AND MENTAL HEALTH
The UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics, led by author Michael Pollan with support from thought leaders like Tim Ferriss, sums up the current moment in its Microdose newsletter: “There has never been a more exciting—or bewildering—time in the world of psychedelics.”
As this goes to press, PBS’ NOVA—the most-watched prime time science series on American television—just dedicated an entire episode to the question “Can Psychedelics Cure?” namely conditions like addiction, PTSD and depression.
Ford recommended the episode with a text.
“This encompasses what is at the core of what drives me on my new passion and makes me apply all my skills and experiences,” he writes. “I want MycoSci to have a leadership role in what I believe is a shift in how we approach physical and mental health through mycology.”
There goes that word again: shift. Another word in there is a Ford favorite too: mycology.
“We’re not just interested in one mushroom; it’s all mushrooms. That’s why we’re Mycology Sciences,” he says. “Two mushrooms from the same species living four miles apart can have totally different qualities because of what surrounds them. We want to explore everything around that.”
A number of elements bodes well: the business model (which builds in spectrometer services revenue), the collaboration potential (including chefs and local universities) and the sheer amount of time Ford has spent thinking about systems while building the warehouse infrastructure by hand (“My last name is Ford!” he says. “He built the assembly line!”).
An additional positive indication leaps out. It arrives after the tour, up in Ford’s office, as he leans back in his chair, clasps his hands above his ponytail and says, “You wanted to know what I’ve been up to? This is what I’ve been up to.”
And then comes the final indicator: a smile as broad as the possibilities.
Mark C. Anderson is a roving writer, explorer and photographer based in Monterey County. Follow and/or reach him on Twitter and Instagram @MontereyMCA.
