"We grow the food of the future in a warehouse"
Mushu Mushrooms – with Alexander Leijon and Frej Edvardsen

Behind an anonymous gate in an industrial area in Stockholm lies what at first glance looks like an ordinary warehouse. But when the door is opened, another world hits you – humid, clean, controlled. The air is heavy with oxygen and the smell of mycelium: earthy, slightly metallic, almost nutty. Inside, Alex and Frej run Mushu Mushrooms – an urban, circular mushroom farm with high-tech precision.

– It’s actually quite simple, says Frej, leaning against one of the fans he built himself. – But it has to work precisely. There’s no room for sloppiness.

He shows the way through a small fan room – a kind of airlock between the outside world and the cultivation. Here the air is sterilized, hands are washed, clothes are changed. All to avoid what is the greatest enemy in the mushroom world: contamination. If a cultivation is infected by mold or the wrong spores, everything is ruined. Then there’s nothing left to do but throw away the entire batch.

– It’s a bit like having a hospital for mushrooms, he says.

Frej has a background as a boat technician and is used to systems that have to work under pressure. He has brought that experience into Mushu – where every temperature change, every percentage point of humidity, every airflow is optimized.

Alex, on the other hand, comes from regenerative agriculture and has always had a strong interest in ecology, cycles and symbioses.

– Mushrooms are nature’s decomposers, but also nature’s chemists. They produce bioactive substances, nutrients, new molecules we have barely begun to understand. And they can be grown on almost anything – waste products from society, from other industries, from the forest.

– We sell to restaurants that really care about the raw material, says Alex. Fine dining establishments around the country that are looking for deeper flavors, better texture, real sustainability.

But the vision doesn't stop there. Frej and Alex see a future where mushroom cultivation is seriously integrated into cities – on roofs, in garages, in abandoned buildings.

– It's so space-efficient, so energy-efficient, and it has so many uses. It's really only your imagination that sets the limits, says Frej.

The next step for Mushu is that they have started developing functional mushroom candy based on the extract. Especially lion's mane, which has been used in many cultures for its alleged effects on brain health, focus and recovery.

– Interest is growing. We notice it, both from chefs, from people who are into biohacking, and from ordinary food lovers, says Alex.

And perhaps that's exactly what makes Mushu Mushrooms so interesting – that it unites so many layers. Taste and science. Technology and biology. Tradition and future.

In a storage room that is actually only a few square meters large, they have built something bigger. A model for what food production could look like – and taste like – in a more sustainable world.