Mushroom Street's Deep Ellum Store Front Is A Wealth Of Mushroom Products And Knowledge

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us picked up hobbies. We rode bikes, learned the guitar or made so much sourdough that yeast became as hard to find as toilet paper. In Warren Gwartney’s case, he started growing mushrooms.

“I’ve always been a tinkerer, and had a bit of a green thumb,” Gwartney says. “And I ended up down this rabbit hole.”
Gwartney became fascinated by the process of cultivating mushrooms and set up a small tent to grow mushrooms in the spare bedroom of his house. Gwartney and his wife, Andrea, ran a web marketing agency, but working from home gave him plenty of opportunity to tweak and expand his mushroom-growing setup. When the mushroom-growing took over the bedroom, Andrea called a timeout.

“I told him I wanted our guest bedroom back,” Andrea says with a laugh. For Warren, he wanted to start an urban mushroom farm. A quick search of available domain names turned up www.mushroom.st, and Mushroom Street Farms was born.

Since moving out of the Gwartney’s guest bedroom, Mushroom Street’s farm operation in Arlington has grown into a 5,000-square-foot urban farm with a small storefront. It has been serving customers with locally grown mushrooms for their home kitchens and restaurants. Mushroom Street was also a regular vendor at the Dallas Farmers Market, so when the time arrived for a dedicated storefront, a Dallas location made the most sense.

Mushroom Street’s Deep Ellum home opened at the end of March in the former home of Mark Cuban’s Broadcast.com headquarters. The Gwartneys enlisted their family to help build out the space, with Andrea’s dad lending a hand in building retail shelves, and Andrea’s daughter helping with the painting of a colorful mushroom mural on the building’s facade.

Inside the store is just as charming. Of course, there are fresh and dried mushrooms for sale, but Mushroom Street believes that sustainability is key to their operation. After mushrooms have fruited, the mushrooms that aren’t sold are used in a variety of different products. There are mushroom tinctures, which promote mental health and boost immunity, mushroom coffees and teas with similar benefits, and even a line of mushroom-based seasonings to kick up your favorite recipes.

While the Gwartneys planned to leverage the Dallas storefront as a home base for their weekend forays at the Dallas Farmers Market, the extra space will also allow Mushroom Street to share its fungus-growing knowledge.
“Mushroom Street Farms has always been about more than just growing mushrooms — we’re educators, community partners and passionate cultivators,” Warren says.

While half of the space is dedicated to selling all things mushroom, the other half will be used for a dedicated workshop space. Mushroom Street plans to hold classes that teach the basics of mushroom cultivation and offer hands-on experiences and demonstrations. They will host chefs who will prepare mushroom-centric dinners. Mushroom Street also sells mushroom cultivating kits that feature a substrate already germinated with mycelium that buyers can take home and start growing mushrooms in just a few weeks, alongside other mushroom cultivating supplies.
We were invited to a media event before the store opened, and Mushroom Street had booked chef Troy Gardner, who is noted for his vegan focus, to create some small dishes for those in attendance. Gardner prepared several bites, including a chicken fried oyster mushroom, Asian-style seared lion's mane mushrooms and a shiitake mushroom-based fried boudin ball. Everything Gardner prepared was stunningly tasty and would disabuse you of negative connotations you might have about a vegan meal. Gardner will be back at Mushroom Street in June for another four-course dinner, tickets to which are just $99 and can be purchased on Mushroom Street’s website.

Unique is perhaps the best way to describe the Mushroom Street experience, which is part specialty food store, part quirky gift shop and part learning annex. It might be the most interesting store to open in Deep Ellum in some time, and one we can’t wait to visit again and expand our fungus knowledge.

Mushroom Street, 2929 Elm Street. Tuesday - Thursday, 12 p.m. - 6 p.m., Friday 12 p.m. - 7 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m. - 7 p.m.