Opala Foods spurs conversation with controversial name

The name of their company is Opala Foods. And although opala means rubbish in Hawaiian, that doesn’t mean Noah Brown and Eli Crow want their product to be thrown away.

When they began producing mushrooms as a business in 2018, Brown and Crow brainstormed ways to give their product a shelf life longer than the usual week to 10 days. That has become especially important in recent months as people stock up on food supplies.

“We realized we can pickle them, we can make jerky,” Brown said.

So while Opala Foods sells fresh oyster mushrooms, Brown and Crow also offer value-added products. Their latest, scheduled to debut in early September, is a second jerky-style snack called Guava Street Mesquite. Like Opala’s first jerky, Korean Sweet Heat, the guava version is a vegetarian product (and despite the “Day Trippers” brand name, they are not made from that kind of mushroom).

The original is stringy, like taegu, the spicy, chewy Korean snack made from fish — and tastes very similar. The new guava- flavored version is similar in texture, but sweeter and not as spicy.

Opala Foods also sells pickled and marinated mushrooms made from three varieties of oyster mushrooms named for their colors: Summer White, Off-White, and Pink.

Contradictions abound: A vegetarian product from something with oyster in its name, an “urban farm” in Kaneohe and mushrooms that look like flowers.

And, of course, that name. At least once a day, Brown is asked if he knows what it means.

“It helps us get the ball rolling, get the dialogue going,” Crow said.

The choice of the name was less about reverse-psychology marketing, more about repurposing waste.

“People focus on single-use plastic recycling,” Crow said. “But our society has a lot of other single-use products that can be used again. There are many forms of agricultural waste that can be used as resources.”

To feed their spores and start the three-to-four-month growing process, they use waste like coffee grounds, sugar cane pulp and straw. “It comes from various local farms,” Brown said. “It’s less stuff that they have to throw away and it helps their carbon footprint.”

They started their farm with mycelium — “essentially, the root of the fungus,” Brown said — bought from a mainland lab company, and have cultivated “100% in-house for the past year.”

The process (detailed at opala foods.com) does not require a green thumb, Brown said. But it might help to have a master’s degree in biological engineering, as does Crow. Brown, who has a business degree, handles most of that end of the operation. They share the physical labor, and there’s plenty to do as their 2,400 square-foot indoor farm is full of mushrooms in various stages of growth.

Brown, who is from Kentucky, worked at a bourbon distillery, then moved to Hawaii five years ago to help open a distillery here, doing “grunt work with sugar cane,” he said.

“There was all this waste. I needed to do something with it.”

So Brown started to grow mushrooms in his apartment. A chance meeting with Crow at a party three years ago — when Brown was a ride-share driver and Crow a bartender — eventually led to Opala Foods.

“It started out as a hobby and then it kind of rolled a bit,” Brown said.

And despite the name, this isn’t junk food.

“Mushrooms have a lot of health benefits due to its content of Vitamin D, iron, protein, fiber, beta-glucans, several other antioxidants,” Brown said.

FIND OPALA FOODS PRODUCTS:

>> Pick up: At Hawaii Farm Bureau Honolulu market, Blaisdell Center (Wed­- nes­days) and FarmLovers at Kakaako market (Saturdays)

>> Order: Via produce delivery services Oahu Fresh and Farm Link Hawaii

>> Online: Some products available at opalafoods.com.

>> Sample prices: Fresh, $5 for 4 ounces; jerky, $9 for 2 ounces; pickled mushrooms, $8 per 8-ounce jar; grow-at-home mushroom blocks, $19.99