I Went to a Trendy Pop-Up Dinner and Spent the Night Staring Into the Abyss of My Toilet Bowl

The menu said "foraged." My digestive system said "absolutely not."

Image by Scorpion Dagger via Giphy

Listen, when someone invites you to a "transformative culinary experience" in an abandoned warehouse where they're serving "hyperlocal ingredients sourced from the earth itself," your first instinct should be to fake illness and stay home. But my first instinct is apparently broken because instead I thought, "This sounds like an adventure," which is exactly the kind of thinking that leads to you googling "can you die from eating too many dandelions" at 3am.

The invitation came from my neighbor Mia, who collects experiences the way other people collect debt. She's the type who goes to silent discos and thinks ayahuasca retreats are "just what she needs to center herself." When she said we absolutely need to go to something called "Dirt to Plate: A Communion with the Forest Floor," I should have recognized this as the universe testing my survival instincts.

I failed the test spectacularly.

The First Red Flag Was Literally a Red Flag

The venue was in what used to be a tire factory, which already felt like a sign for how this night was going to go. Outside, there was an actual red flag hanging from a rusted pole, and beneath it, a chalkboard sign that read "Welcome to Your Awakening" in the kind of handwriting that suggests the person holding the chalk was either an artist or having a breakdown.

The door was answered by a guy wearing overalls with no shirt underneath, which is a look that works on exactly zero people but he was committing to it with the confidence of someone who had never heard the word "no." He introduced himself as Sage, which was either his given name or the first herb he'd eaten that morning.

"You're here for the journey," he said, looking directly into my soul like he could see all my past dietary failures. "The forest has been waiting for you."

The forest, it turned out, had been waiting for me in the form of fifteen other people standing around what looked like a crime scene but was apparently the dining area. Tables made from actual tree stumps. Chairs that were just logs with cushions on top of them. Mason jars filled with what I hoped was water but could have been pond scum for all I knew.

The lighting was provided entirely by candles stuck into wine bottles, which created the perfect ambiance for either a romantic dinner or a séance. Given what was about to happen to my digestive system, both seemed appropriate.

The Menu Was Written on Bark Because Of Course It Was

Chef Willow—and yes, that was her actual name, written on a piece of driftwood she wore around her neck like a badge of honor—emerged from what I assumed was the kitchen but looked more like a controlled burn situation. She was wearing what appeared to be burlap fashioned into a dress, accessorized with several pounds of handmade jewelry that clinked when she moved like wind chimes in a gentle breeze.

She gathered us around and began explaining the "philosophy behind tonight's nourishment experience." Each course, she said, would represent our relationship with the natural world and challenge our preconceptions about what food could be.

The menu itself was written on a piece of tree bark, which made it both environmentally conscious and completely impossible to read in the candlelight. But Willow helpfully explained each course in detail, using words like "umami journey" and "textural narrative" with the seriousness of someone discussing nuclear physics.

Course one: Dandelion root soup with "essence of earthworm casting."

Course two: Clover leaf salad dressed in what she called "morning dew reduction" but looked suspiciously like puddle water.

Course three: Acorn flour bread with fermented rose hip compote.

Course four: Wild mushroom medley foraged that morning from "secret locations throughout the tri-county area."

And course five: Nettle ice cream with honeycomb harvested from "our partner bees who consent to this collaboration."

I should mention that the total cost of this meal was $180 per person, which works out to approximately $36 per potential food poisoning incident.

The Dandelion Soup Tasted Like Earthworm Poo

The first course arrived in what appeared to be a hollowed-out gourd, which was both charming and concerning. The soup itself looked like dishwater that had given up on life, and it tasted like someone had boiled grass clippings in sadness topped with a sprinkling of an earthworm’s digested meal.

But here's the thing about expensive weird food—you convince yourself it's good because you paid a lot for it. I watched the other diners nodding appreciatively and making "mmm" sounds, so I made "mmm" sounds too, even though my taste buds were filing a formal complaint.

The woman next to me, who introduced herself as Luna and claimed to be a "food consciousness consultant," leaned over and said, "You can really taste the terroir, can't you?"

I nodded like I knew what terroir was and wasn't just experiencing the flavor of something that had grown next to a highway.

The Mushrooms Were Where Everything Went Wrong

The wild mushroom course looked innocent enough. Just regular mushrooms, sautéed with what Willow called "forest floor seasoning" which I later realized might have been actual dirt. They tasted earthy, which seemed appropriate, and slightly bitter, which seemed less appropriate but what did I know about mushroom foraging.

About halfway through the course, I started feeling what I initially thought was the spiritual connection to nature that Willow had promised. A warm, tingly sensation that started in my stomach and spread outward like I was slowly being filled with golden light.

Then the room started breathing.

Not in a metaphorical way. The walls were literally expanding and contracting like the inside of lungs, and the candle flames were leaving trails of light when they flickered. Luna's face had developed what appeared to be fractal patterns, and Sage was somehow simultaneously talking to me and standing across the room.

"Oh," I said to no one in particular. "Oh no."

This was not spiritual enlightenment. This was definitely not the transformative culinary experience I had paid for. This was magic mushrooms, and I was about to spend the next eight hours learning exactly why you should never trust a chef named Willow who sources ingredients from "secret locations."

The Toilet Bowl Became My Meditation Partner

What followed was the longest night of my life, split between hugging my toilet like it was my dearest friend and staring at my bathroom ceiling trying to remember if the patterns in the paint had always moved like that or if I was still very much under the influence of Willow's forest floor special.

Every time I thought the worst was over, my stomach would remind me that we were nowhere near done processing whatever the hell I had eaten. The nettle ice cream, it turned out, was not particularly compatible with a digestive system that was already in full revolt.

I spent the hours between 2 and 6am having what I can only describe as philosophical conversations with my own reflection, trying to determine if I was dying or just really, really wish I was. At one point, I became convinced that my bathroom tiles contained the secrets of the universe, which seemed profound at the time but in retrospect was probably just the mushrooms talking.

But let me back up because I'm getting ahead of myself. The mushroom situation hit me right around course four, which means I still had nettle ice cream coming and absolutely zero ability to handle it.

The walls were doing their breathing thing, Luna had turned into what appeared to be a talking kaleidoscope, and I realized I needed to get the hell out of there before things got worse. I mumbled something to Mia about feeling sick—which was technically true—and stumbled toward what I hoped was the exit.

Getting home is mostly a blur involving an Uber driver who either didn't notice I was having a transcendent experience in his backseat or was remarkably chill about the whole thing. I remember staring at the streetlights streaming past the window like golden ribbons and thinking very seriously about whether time was even real.

I also remember texting my mom "I love you and also colors have feelings" at some point during the ride, which she brought up a week later during a visit and I had to pretend I'd been drunk.

By morning, I felt like I had been hit by a truck that was also on fire and driven by someone who had personal vendetta against my entire digestive system.

The Real Transformation Was Learning to Ask Questions

Three days later, after I had recovered enough to function like a normal human being, I did what I should have done before agreeing to eat mysterious forest fungi prepared by someone named after a plant.

I called Mia.

"Did you know," I said, "that Willow's mushrooms were special mushrooms?"

"What do you mean special?" she asked, in the tone of someone who genuinely had no idea what I was talking about.

"I mean I spent four hours convinced my bathroom mirror was trying to communicate with me."

Long pause.

"Oh," she said. "OH. That explains why I kept laughing at my ceiling fan for two hours."

Apparently, neither of us had done any research beyond "sounds fun" and "there will be food." Mia had just seen the event on some underground foodie Facebook group and thought it sounded like an adventure. She had no idea that "forest floor seasoning" might include ingredients that were, shall we say, recreationally enhanced.

"But honestly," she said, "it was kind of amazing. I feel like I really connected with something primal."

Some people.

The Moral of This Culinary Disaster

The lesson here is simple: if someone invites you to eat "foraged" food prepared by someone with a plant name in an abandoned warehouse, just say no. Order pizza instead. Pizza has never made anyone question the nature of reality while dry-heaving into a toilet bowl at 4am.

Also, always ask more questions than "sounds fun" when someone invites you to eat mystery food in abandoned buildings. The internet exists for a reason, and that reason is to warn you about chefs who think "foraged" means "whatever I found growing behind the warehouse."

Sometimes I think about that night, about how I paid $180 to have my consciousness expanded against my will and my digestive system destroyed for fun. About how I spent more money on accidental enlightenment than I do on groceries in a month.

But mostly I just prepare my own food now.

The forest can keep its secrets. I'll stick to food that comes from places with health department ratings and chefs who don't forage their ingredients from highway medians.

My toilet bowl and I have been through enough together.