Nameko and Cinnamon Cap

Both of the perfect mushroom clusters shown here are cultivated Pholiota species. The shiny caramel bouquet at the top right is Pholiota nameko. At the lower left is an unspecified Pholiota isolate collected in Asia and farmed (and trademarked) by Gourmet Mushrooms in Sebastopol, California—producers of some of this country’s finest fungi.

Nameko, “common in the cool temperate highlands of China, Taiwan and throughout the islands of northern Japan,” has become “one of the most popular cultivated mushrooms in Japan, closely ranking behind Shiitake and Enokitake,” writes Paul Stamets in Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms. The small, slender-stemmed beauty (which looks like a ceramic mushroom imitating a real one) cooks quickly to a sweet, gentle savor with a hint of chanterelle. It also develops a slurpy and slithery quality that pleases Japanese connoisseurs but makes many Westerners squirm.