Mushroom retailer Damian Pike moves on from buttons to exotic imports
Damian Pike has been selling mushrooms at a Melbourne market for 30 years — and he still gives a shiitake.
At 75, Damian Pike is as attached to Melbourne’s Prahran Market as he is to the mushrooms he has been selling there for the past 30 years.
Even if you don’t give a shiitake about the fungus, Pike could change your mind with his enthusiasm. The first and only specialist mushroom retailer in Victoria, he has carved out a name for himself as a retail pioneer of the Asian, European and Australian mushrooms we take for granted.
Three decades ago, most mushrooms still came in tins. “They were pretty tricky monsters to get to stay on the fork or plate,” he says. “When I bought this business way back, there were no mushrooms other than buttons.”
Pike saw the demand for Asian mushrooms overseas and thought he would try something different.
His first lot of shiitakes came from Indonesia and, thanks to food writers who helped spread the word, the business thrived.
“I would get the product and they would buy the product, simple as that,” he says. “I have been very, very lucky, the industry has been very, very good to me.”
Pike describes the beginning as an exciting time and a “big ride”.
“Everybody enjoyed it. It was just fun and the fun turned into a successful business 30 years later,” he says.
Now the business stocks Asian varieties, French mushrooms such as pied de mouton, black trumpet and chanterelle, as well as the Australian morel, which is found only in Victoria in September.
This year had been excellent for mushrooms such as slippery jacks, pines and wood blewits in Australia, Pike says.
“Cold, damp and a little bit of drizzle, it’s been absolutely perfect this year,” he says.
“If we have a drought or warmer weather, it doesn’t help us one bit but it helps the guys growing cultivated mushrooms.”
Pike’s knowledge of mushrooms is formidable. It needs to be, given the risks associated with stocking a wild product and the skills required in identifying the edible from the inedible varieties.
Pike also gives cooking tips, of course.
“Some of (the mushrooms) of course look spooky and terrible but taste great,” he says.
“I have a little saying: ‘You cook it fast and eat it slow.’ Keep it simple, don’t hurt it. You’re buying a mushroom, you’re not buying a pumpkin — that’s the difference.”
Pike says mushrooms are best kept in a paper bag in the fridge for four to six days at the most before eating.
While he agrees portobello mushrooms are a great standby, if he were to pick a favourite it would probably be imported mushrooms such as chanterelles or mousserons.
Pike admits he’s starting to notice the long days at the market.
“One week I will just say, ‘Yep, I’ve had enough’,” he says.
“It would be nice if, when I do go, someone will come and run the business. It would be silly not to. I could pass on all my knowledge.”
Given he was awarded an Order of Australia in 2011 for services to the fruit and vegetable industry, there’s a lot of knowledge there for the taking.