IT was an early morning call for us during a visit to Bohol last May 2022.
Instead of having breakfast at the hotel where we were staying, the Best Western Plus - Ivywall, we were told that we would be having our breakfast at the Green Thumb Farm.
It was nearly an hour's drive to the Green Thumb Farm from the hotel. The farm tourism site was lush with plants and I love that you can hear the birds chirping from the trees.
The farm, which is owned by Rona Denque and her family, started in 2017. While they started their restaurant, The Green Thumb Alfresco, in 2021.
While our breakfast was being prepared, we were given a quick tour of their mushroom farm, which was a vertical farm inside a temperature-controlled building.
They grow different kinds of mushrooms at the farm like the brown, pink, and white oyster mushrooms and the ganoderma mushroom. Denque said through the farm, they wanted to introduce to the general public the consumption of mushrooms as a healthy food option.
When they opened their restaurant in April 2021, they were able to further introduce and educate locals and visitors about the mushroom.
After the quick tour of the mushroom farm and the chat with Denque, our breakfast is served.
For this visit, Green Thumb Alfresco prepared us their Ube Champorado, Green Thumb Mushroom Salad, Mushroom Pizza, Mushroom Humba, Mushroom Sisig, Mushroom Siomai, Mushroom Steak, and Ube smoothie. It was definitely a breakfast feast.
The Ube Champorado had that distinct ube flavor, something many ube champorado lack. It was a hearty way to start the meal.
The Green Thumb Mushroom Salad consists of freshly picked mushrooms and vegetables. It was a light and bright aspect of the meal.
The Mushroom Pizza satisfies your pizza cravings. It was surprisingly light for what could have been a heavy dish.
The Mushroom Sisig was also great. It was wonderfully seasoned too.
My three favorites are the Mushroom Humba, Mushroom Steak, and Mushroom Siomai.
The Mushroom Humba was delightful. It was a sinful dish that I think humba lovers, like me, would enjoy. The mushroom was juicy and flavorful.
The Mushroom Steak, their meatless version of the classic bistek Tagalog, was also a flavorful dish. It was salty, sweet, and sour. It was a delicious spoonful after another.
The Mushroom Siomai was the biggest surprise for me. At a glance, it is like any ordinary siomai. A bite of it feels like you are eating a regular meaty siomai. But this one was mushroom through and through. It was seasoned well too.
Overall, we had a wonderful breakfast at Green Thumb. I think what is so great about mushrooms is their versatility as an ingredient. The Green Thumb showed us in a brief yet educational breakfast how many dishes you can use mushrooms, particularly the oyster mushroom, as a main ingredient.
The mushroom also makes for a great meat substitute. It has that meaty texture that you tend to look for in your cooked meats -- firm yet quite tender. The oyster mushrooms were also surprisingly juicy as well.
The Green Thumb Farm not only serves delicious food at the Alfresco, it also allows one to understand and appreciate the humble mushroom more and see it at a different perspective.
As of December 2022, Cebu Pacific flies from Davao City to Tagbilaran (Bohol-Panglao International Airport) three times a week -- Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. Book your flights at www.cebupacificair.com. RJL