Shroomi started as a passion project in Hong Kong in 2020.

I had been a vegan for five years by that point and fully obsessed with finding the best plant-based versions of all my favourite foods. Growing up in Hong Kong, lion’s mane mushroom was often used in Chinese vegetarian cuisine to replicate the chewiness of meat (shout out to M Garden Vegetarian in Mong Kok, who makes an AMAZING vegan sweet and sour pork with it…IYKYK). When I first tried lion’s mane mushroom, I was like, Damn, this would be unreal if it was battered and deep-fried. After two years of recipe testing and business planning, Shroomi was born.

I knew the recipe was too good not to share, I felt like I was actually eating fried chicken. So I turned it into a business where I could not only fill the vegan-fried-chicken-shaped hole for my fellow Hong Kong vegans, but also show everyone else just how freakin’ tasty vegan food can be.

As a food lover, I often get asked, “How can you be a foodie if you’re vegan?” But honestly, I think the most exciting advancements happening in the food industry, are the ones happening in the vegan food scene. When you’re tasked with recreating well-known, beloved, sometimes even worshipped dishes (while only using plants), you’re gonna end up doing some crazy stuff to those veggies!

I’ll admit, sometimes it can miss the mark… we’ve all had an unseasoned dry bean burger by now. BUT, when you get that bean burger right, it leaves you wondering why we don’t just eat like this in the first place.

I started selling boxes of Shroomi in 2022, and within the first six months, I had sold over 500 servings. Which was crazy. You can have a stalk of my shroomi.co Instagram which is where I sold it. I was working with an awesome charity called Feeding HK which worked to redistribute food to people in need to that otherwise would have been thrown out. With every box of shroomi sold we would donate meal to someone who needed it.

Very few accomplishments in my life have made me happier than meeting my customers and hearing just how much they enjoyed Shroomi. It sounds corny, but it really is amazing to share something you love with people, and have them love it too.

That said… starting a cooked food business here has been a lot harder (and more expensive) than in Hong Kong. You always hear about Hong Kong being an expensive city, but they actually make it super easy (and as I have learnt relatively cheap) to start a business and get things done. Melbourne? Not so much. So, while I can’t start selling my vegan fried chicken just yet, I’m kicking things off by selling dried lion’s mane mushrooms and my How to Shroomi eBook, which teaches you how to cook with them and make incredible plant-based comfort food at home.

My goal is to grow this new phase of Shroomi, build an awesome community, and eventually raise enough funds to rent a commercial kitchen so I can bring the original vegan fried chicken back—bigger, crispier, and better than ever.

If you’ve read this far, you’re a legend, and I can’t wait for you to try some Shroomi!

Here were some of my old Shroomi posts:

This is what the vegan fried chicken looked like:

This recipe is actually in my ebook! So if you want to try and make this yourself grab some dried lions mane and the cookbook and away you go! If you make it, definitely tag @shroomi.co on instgram on tiktok/instgram so that I can cry tears of joy knowing that shroomi lives on!