Mycelium Cuisine

A Food Culture Nurtured by the Underground World

The culinary culture The Root Realm takes pride in was born from an ecosystem utterly unlike surface agriculture. Technology honed using only fungi and bioluminescent organisms as ingredients in a sunless underground world represents a kind of extreme gastronomy.

"Kinshi flour" refined from mycelium is the foundation of Root Realm staple food — odorless, high in protein, and existing in various varieties. Special varieties containing bioluminescent components are used in ceremonial cuisine; those who eat it experience their body glowing faintly blue-white for about a night. "Glowing meals" are iconic sights of festival nights.

The Regional Dish Called Glowing Pot

"Glowing Pot," which uses raw bioluminescent fungi, is the representative Root Realm regional dish. As the ingredients simmer, the entire pot illuminates, lighting the dining table. When you finish eating, your body glows warmly — Root Realm people describe this as "taking the earth's light into the body."

Penetration into The Canopy Isles and "Earth Flavor"

Canopy Isles people long showed aversion to this food culture, and bringing the ingredients in was prohibited. Yet in recent years, Rakuen's culinary world has been secretly incorporating mycelium seasonings, and among Canopy chefs they are secretly prized as "earth flavor."

Root Realm cuisine is evaluated not only by "taste" but by "texture" and "light." Eating in complete darkness is considered the highest-class dining experience, and in Root Realm high-end restaurants all lighting is extinguished during meals. The cuisine itself emits light and illuminates the table — dining by that faint light is described as an experience fusing four senses: vision, taste, touch, and luminescence.

Grounding Cuisine and Table Diplomacy

Most special within mycelium cuisine is "grounding cuisine" — food with mycelium strands from the Memory of the Earth incorporated, enabling those who eat it to experience fragmentary memories of the mycelium network. Serving it in formal settings is restricted by the Mycelium Code, but in informal settings this cuisine is prized. The experience of "fragments of someone's memories flowing in along with the taste" is passed down as something incomparable to anything else.

At the Great Fall Research Institute's Rakuen headquarters, an informal "table diplomacy" has taken root where Root Realm-born researchers serve mycelium cuisine to their Canopy colleagues to deepen mutual understanding. Doors opened by food have sometimes created dialogue that official diplomacy could not.