Every gourmand knows that freshly-picked forest mushrooms are to die for – but only if you’re not careful! According to rtlklub.hu, a total of eleven people have been hospitalized in Hungary for mushroom poisoning in recent days. Three residents of Szombathely were reported to be in critical condition at Budapest’s Erzsébet Hospital after eating “death cap” mushrooms (Latin: Amanita phalloides; Hungarian: gyilkos galóca), and a man from Kaposvár expired last weekend apparently from eating the same lethal gomba. What makes the gyilkos galóca so dangerous is that it looks a lot like non-dangerous mushrooms, and, according to the wikipedia entry on Amanita phalloides, it only takes around 50 grams (two ounces) of the thing to do you in. Because of this, experts believe the death cap may be the culprit in nine out of 10 mushroom-related deaths around the world. And even if you survive, you are likely to have really, really bad liver damage, which every serious drinker will know is worse than not surviving.
While you should be careful about picking mushrooms, or accepting any ‘shrooms that someone else has picked, don’t write them off. Instead, take your potential murderers over to the south side of the Nagyvásárcsarnok (central market hall) in Budapest’s District IX and have them examined by one of the mushroom experts there (yes, there is such a thing). Meanwhile, if you do want to do yourself in, the gyilkos galóca seems like an excellent option, as at least one survivor has said they taste “wonderful.”
