Greg Lusson and Kayla Burton, the "professional garlicologists" behind Pine Cone Kitchen.

Early last spring, as the chill of winter retreated and the days became noticeably longer, we at the Messenger first published an interview in the March 24th edition titled “Black Garlic? – A New Lost Sierra Specialty”. The interview was with Kayla Burton and Greg Lusson, the founders of Graeagle’s own Pine Cone Kitchen. Now that the better part of a year has passed, we thought it might be wise to follow up with this duo and see what’s happened since then.

In case you’ve forgotten what black garlic is, here is a quick refresher – a substance is produced by taking whole bulbs of garlic and fermenting them with a combination of heat and humidity until the bulb’s tissues undergo the Maillard Reaction (a form of sugar and amino acid transformation that gives flavor to everything from grilled meat to roasted coffee), causing them to turn a deep black and take on a unique texture almost like a fig or dried date. The flavor is less acrid and more earthy than normal garlic and has a sweet aftertaste, almost like a slightly garlic-flavored gummy candy.

Since our last interview with them, Burton and Lusson have seen their business grow dramatically across the region. In 2022, they were hoping to “get into the Reno market eventually”, but barely a year later the duo have nearly saturated the Truckee market with retail sales at New Moon Foods and Tahoe Food Hub, and menu offerings at Gravity Haus’s Stella restaurant and the Truckee Food Shop. They also made their first entry into the Reno area with a special offering at IceCycle Creamery earlier this year, where a black garlic-blackberry swirl was served in a limited-time event.

Lots of interesting applications have been developed by chefs across the area, who have experimented with the black garlic to create some delightful culinary concoctions. One of Lusson’s favorite concoctions was created by caterer Truly Tanner, proprietor of Terroir Bar, who made a riff on a mezcal Old Fashioned with homemade black garlic aromatic bitters and a clove of this substance as a garnish – a drink idea that your intrepid author finds quite appealing. Other highlights from the past year include Stella’s lead chef Chris Watkins serving grilled octopus with a black garlic marinade, and Truckee-area chef Michael Murray’s black garlic ramen pop-up selling out in presale reservations alone!

Pine Cone Kitchen has also made upgrades on the business side since March of last year, hiring a tech-savvy local to build an official website for them. This allowed them to expand their sales and take their garlic from merely a regional flavor to an item that can be shipped nationally; in fact, sales picked up enough that the duo was able to invest in new preparation equipment and increase both the quality and quantity of their product – critical in the face of what promises to be their busiest year yet.

So what’s next for this duo? While Burton and Lusson have somewhat withdrawn their presence at Plumas County markets to avoid overcommitting, they’ve made significant strides with their Truckee and Tahoe-area sales, and have started to crack their way into the Reno market over the course of last fall. “Eventually, we’re aiming for the Bay Area” said Lusson, adding that they anticipated movement in that direction would require them to produce “at least double our output now” just to satiate that potential market alone. With all that said, the duo is still doing their best to avoid compromising their quality and their business’s roots in the area.

Since the Messenger’s original article was published, several other locals have tried their hand at making a similar product. Jon McCormack of Sasquatch Farm in Quincy was their first competitor, and Gary Romano of Sierra Valley Farms has also made his own black garlic. As for Lusson and Burton? They welcome the competition. “It’s really cool to see that we’ve inspired others to try their best” Lusson said during our interview with him, pondering a bag of black garlic on the table in front of him. “We’re often imitated, but never duplicated.”