Occupational Hazards

Whoops! Jonathon Sawyer Accidentally Poisoned Himself With a False Chanterelle

Sawyer, fully recovered and burger-ready.
Sawyer, fully recovered and burger-ready. Photo: Melissa Hom

“I forage all the time,” Jonathon Sawyer told us at the Burger Bash on Friday night. The chef of Cleveland’s Greenhouse Tavern was slinging a Provençal-inspired lamb burger that was devoid of mushrooms — not a terribly notable omission until you realize that Sawyer had to book it to the hospital recently thanks to a mushroom-foraging trip gone wrong. “The majority of the time [we forage], we do it for greens,” Sawyer explained to us about his adventure with poisonous fungus. “Every once in a while, we find mushrooms that we trust. Normally I check against three different journals — I do the Audubon, I do the Smithsonian, and then I do an online one. I was so hasty because I found so many, I didn’t check in all three and I had a false chanterelle.” Could it have been the seasonally topical Jack-o-Lantern mushroom? Whatever it was, Sawyer soldiered on. “My wife took me to the hospital; I was fine,” he said. “I just threw up for about an hour and had to get some liquids. It was more of an embarrassment that it was anything else.”

Whoops! Jonathon Sawyer Accidentally Poisoned Himself With a False Chanterelle