Kennett Square
"Kennett Square smells faintly of soil and butter, and somehow that's a compliment."
The self-declared mushroom capital of the world, a small Chester County town that grows more than half of America's mushrooms in dark barns tucked behind ordinary-looking farmhouses. Lia and I ate mushroom soup, mushroom fries, and a mushroom-stuffed something we still can't fully identify, and loved every strange bite.
We drove into Kennett Square not quite believing the claim printed on the welcome sign — mushroom capital of the world — and left convinced it might genuinely be true. This corner of Chester County produces well over half the mushrooms grown in the United States, an industry started in the 1880s by Quaker farmers experimenting under greenhouse benches and grown, almost invisibly, in dark barns scattered across the surrounding countryside. From the outside, Kennett Square looks like any handsome small Pennsylvania town — brick storefronts, a clocktower, a state-run university just up the road — but the mushroom economy hums quietly underneath nearly everything.
A menu built entirely around fungi
At a downtown restaurant we ordered without really planning to make it a theme, and ended up with cream of mushroom soup, truffled mushroom fries, and a portobello dish so dense and savory Lia swore it had meat hidden in it somewhere. Every September the town holds the Mushroom Festival, drawing tens of thousands of people for mushroom-eating contests and a parade led by a giant inflatable mushroom, and even outside festival season nearly every restaurant on State Street has at least one dish built to prove the point. It sounds like a gimmick until you taste how good the produce actually is, grown minutes away rather than shipped in from anywhere else.
Longwood Gardens next door
Just a few minutes outside town sits Longwood Gardens, the sprawling estate and conservatory built by industrialist Pierre du Pont, and we spent a full afternoon wandering its illuminated fountain gardens and glass conservatories thick with orchids. It’s technically a separate attraction, but it’s so close and so tied to the same wealthy du Pont families who shaped this stretch of Chester County that it felt like part of the same visit. We watched the evening fountain show from a bench near the main lawn, water arcing in patterns timed to music, mushroom farms and mansion gardens somehow sharing the same few square miles of Pennsylvania countryside.
Getting There
Kennett Square is about 40 minutes southwest of Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) via US-1, making it an easy day trip or overnight stop from the city. A car is essential for exploring both the town and Longwood Gardens, since there’s no meaningful public transit this far into Chester County’s farmland.
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