Something is going on with mushrooms in Montreal. And honestly, we’re okay with it.
Mushrooms are popping up in more corners of the food scene, from urban farms to restaurant menus and even fermentation workshops. During Fermes en Ville, 17 Montreal restaurants created special dishes using ingredients grown by the city’s urban farms, including mushrooms. And at Brasserie San-O, an upcoming workshop will have participants making mushroom shoyu koji, a Japanese-style fermented seasoning packed with umami. That’s a pretty good sign that mushrooms are having more than a moment.
Then there’s Jardins Sauvages, which is bringing back its annual Wild Mushroom Menu this fall. The 2026 menu runs from October 17 to November 21 and goes well beyond the usual mushroom side dish, with wild mushrooms appearing in everything from dashi and couscous to tartiflette and a stuffed mushroom course. For Montreal diners, that’s the fun part. Mushrooms aren’t just something sitting beside the steak anymore. They’re becoming a star ingredient, a source of local flavour and a playground for chefs. We may have a mushroom problem. But we’re not complaining. And with mushroom season arriving, expect to see even more of them on Montreal plates in the weeks ahead.