#343
#344
The Art of Offbeat Travel
Best Mushrooms in India
“Whenever I travel to a
major city, I never spend the
night there. I find a suburb
or a small village nearby and
stay there to understand
the culture and food in a
better way by connecting
with the locals. If I am visiting
Frankfurt in Germany, for
exampIe, I’ll stay put in
Mainz or Wiesbaden instead,
which are beautiful towns
just half an hour away from
Frankfurt.”
Team TS adds: Mainz is
located at the confluence of
the Rhine and Main Rivers.
Strolling along the Rhine
and sampling local wines
India is the biggest cultivator
of mushrooms, whether it
is shiitake, oyster or porcini
and Himachal Pradesh is the
best place to source them.
Mushroom cultivation in
India was initiated for the
first time at Solan in the
mid-sixties. Its popularity
is growing and mushroom
cultivation has been taken
up by Uttar Pradesh,
Haryana, Rajasthan etc.
while earlier it was confined
to J&K, Himachal Pradesh
and other hilly areas.
The mushroom industry
is still largely export-based.
From Masterchef Manjit Singh Gill of ITC Hotels
in a half-timbered Altstadt
tavern are as much a part of
any Mainz visit as viewing
the fabulous Dom, Chagall’s
ethereal windows in StStephan-Kirche, or the first
printed Bible in the bibliophile
paradise of the Gutenberg
Museum.
Wiesbaden lies at the
eastern edge of the Rheingau
wine-growing region, which
stretches along the right
(northern) bank of the Rhine,
west of the Rüdesheim area
of the Romantic Rhine and
is lined with magnificent
neoclassical buildings that
were rebuilt after WWII.
54 Travel Secrets November-December 2015
From Piyush Jain, Corporate Chef, Mia Bella, New Delhi
Most of the produce from big
commercial farms is canned
in brine and exported to
destinations outside India,
especially USA and the
quality of the mushrooms
exported is excellent.
The mushrooms are in raw
form and exported cheaply.
They are processed and
packaged in USA and Japan
and sold back to India at
much higher prices. That
is why I suggest we stop
importing mushrooms from
the international market
and source them from India
instead.