A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to eat what I harvested. While this is nothing new, what made the experience different was it was served in one of the iconic restaurants of the city I grew up in.

I have never known San Juan without Cafe Ysabel. To me, it is synonymous with old San Juan. Its chef and owner, Gene Gonzalez (who also owns and operates the Center for Asian Culinary Studies [CACS]) has been a fixture in the local culinary scene for as long as I can remember. When I dropped by Cafe Ysabel for this interview, he also invited me to pick my own mushrooms and immediately served them in a consomme after.

Gonzalez began growing mushrooms during the pandemic after someone gave him a grow bag. “All you have to do is take care of it, keep it under ideal conditions, and it will fruit.”

He began trying out different kinds of mushrooms, sourcing them from all over the country back when they were still hard to find online. “I was creating my own growing media. Now you really don’t need to do it. You can just buy the bag, keep it under good conditions, and start harvesting.”

He has since settled on two varieties: the brown oyster mushroom and the milky mushroom. “The white oyster is the most prolific variety and it’s used by the mushroom chicharon makers, but I find it to be bland and tasteless. I also find a lot of wastage because you have to snip the fibrous stems. Then there’s the aesthetic of a yellow mushroom, but they don’t last. Give it about 12 hours and they start oxidizing. The red or pink oysters are beautiful and prolific, but I find the flavor too earthy and some people don't like it. The brown oyster mushrooms are enjoyable. They are, what an ordinary human being would say, ‘This tastes like a mushroom, it has wonderfully earthy, meaty notes.’ I’ve tried everything—lionsmane, shiitake—but we don’t have the weather for them,” he said.”

“The milky mushrooms to me were the most effective. I think they are also the most delicious. There’s a lot of bulk. If you go into this commercially, it would be nice.”

Milky mushrooms aren’t new in the Philippines, but their popularity has yet to take off, at least in comparison to the ubiquitous oyster mushrooms. “Milky mushrooms like big containers for their substrate. The nutrients are less compact so they really grow huge. The biggest milky mushroom I’ve harvested was about an easy five to six inches in diameter. They grow in a clump, and you can eat them from tip to tip. All you’ve got to do is cut off the soil-like substrate and you can make different dishes out of the texture of the stems and the caps.”

His mushrooms are mainly grown for personal consumption. “I eat mushrooms almost five times a week.”

Gonzalez is a cancer survivor, and part of his interest in growing mushrooms stem from their health benefits. “The medicinal benefits you can get from mushrooms are great. It’s not harmful to eat them raw, but you won’t get as many benefits as when you cook them lightly.”

Sometimes, Cafe Ysabel guests can reap the rewards of his harvests as well. “If I have an overharvest, I would ferment and dry them for use in my sauces because the intensity is very strong. You give it a slight hint of fermentation, the amino acids just go up and the flavors are magnificent,” he said. “When we have beautiful harvests, we sell them baked and stuffed.”

I got to try the latter, which was composed of chopped onions, herbs, and ham stuffed into brown oyster caps and topped with grated cheese; a simple, clean-tasting dish that whets the appetite.

Growing his own food has subtly influenced the way he runs the restaurant. “It’s kind of artisanal because when you come to Cafe Ysabel, there’s always a small surprise, and I continue with that. The customers, especially regulars who know our menu, would be pleasantly surprised.”

It’s also made its way into the CACS program, which now includes sprouting. Next year, the school will also be offering a professional Asian program that focuses on technique as opposed to relying on recipes. “There will be obligatory recipes but these will allow chefs to create their own variants.”

Cultivating food crops has given Gonzalez a newfound appreciation for the privilege of being able to harvest fresh from his garden. “It’s not free, but it’s almost free because it’s something that you grew,” he said. “Also the comparison of terroir. You grow something and it will taste very differently from something you’ve tried outside or bought outside. There is a difference.”