There is a month when the rains, the oaks and the mycelium come to an agreement. In August the forest fruits with a generosity unmatched the rest of the year, and we walked all of it: three outings, two forests, two festivals along the way, and hundreds of findings. This is the logbook of Hongosto 2026.
The Sierra, the fire and two cooks
On Friday the 7th we opened the month with the Kids tour: the Sierra at the eye level of those who still question everything. And on Sunday the 9th the walk ended in fire: with Nelcy Martínez and Jesús “Chuy” Arellano, chefs and co-founders of restaurant Agavia 115 in San Miguel de Allende, the morning's harvest became a midday feast.
Four Fires, One Mycelium
The Fungi Kingdom also sat us down to dinner. Fungidencias: Cuatro Fuegos, Un Micelio — Four Fires, One Mycelium — was a four-hands dinner creating symbiosis between the fires and the mushrooms, made together with Agavia, Cañita and Garnacha: escabeche on toast, mycelium consommé, forest lobster over embers, mushroom volcanoes, enmoladas of shredded mole, and s'mores over the fire to close. A whole menu where the mushroom was not a garnish but the protagonist.
August traveled to other kitchens too
Our mushrooms did not stay in the Sierra. In August we collaborated on the menu of La Cocinoteca in León, Guanajuato —the house of chef Juan Emilio Villaseñor, who researches and champions the ingredients of the Central Altiplano—: the season's wild mushrooms entered their kitchen and we sat at their table.
And in the same spirit, our friends at Mil Prep —cooking with organic ingredients from local agroecological farms, between San Miguel de Allende and Querétaro— brought the Fungi Kingdom into their preparations for the month. Cooks who walk the forest are cooks who understand it: the mycelial network is woven between kitchens too.
Fungidencias: the Fungi Kingdom festival at Rancho Calixto
On Saturday 22 and Sunday 23, Rancho Calixto —eighty hectares of oak and pine in Chitejé de la Cruz, Amealco de Bonfil, Querétaro, operating as a Wildlife Conservation Management Unit— became the home of Fungidencias, our Fungi Kingdom festival: a full weekend of Fauna, Flora and Funga among wooden cabins, trails and a palapa overlooking the valley.
There was a fungivore market with the nanacateras of the State of Mexico, guardians of mycological knowledge, and their wild harvest —the abundance that opens this chronicle—; workshops in illustration, cookies and microscopes; observation walks for flora, fauna and funga with local guides; and deer at sunset in the forest that protects them.
And when night fell, the walk The Invisible Forest, guided by biologists Victor Hugo and Bea, lit up what daylight keeps hidden: under ultraviolet light, the mycelium drew rivers of light across the earth. The signature dinner by chef David Jahnke closed Saturday by placing mushrooms at the center of the plate: a contemporary reading of the Amealco forest.
Because that is the rule that at Calixto is also a declaration: no foraging here. You observe, you photograph, and everything stays in the forest. Every image uploaded to the Rancho Calixto project on iNaturalist is a data point that keeps working for that forest: the festival's BioBlitz is still open and growing.
The season goes on
September takes us to the city: we take part in Biofunga Fest 2026 at Huerto Roma Verde, Mexico City, on September 12 and 13, free admission — and the post-festival forays are decided by vote between the Sierra de Santa Rosa and Rancho Calixto.
See September and vote for your forestUpload your findings to the project
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