La Toque has long been known for our extravagant truffle menus. White truffle season got off to a tough start last fall after a warm dry summer in Piedmont. Truffles need summer rain to trigger the fruiting cycle that results in harvest months later. By November, in spite of the small harvest and small size, the perfume was extraordinary and the price as high as we've ever seen. The last of the whites pretty much dried up by Christmas, which seems early compared to the last few years, but is actually normal. 

The fresh black winter truffle season has now come to an end. We've got some Mt. Tam ripening with the last of the truffles and a pretty good stash of home made truffle butter to pull out from time to time and tide us through spring and summer to the fall. Interestingly, for such a challenging season, it lasted longer than any in recent memory and the tiny truffles at the end were the most fragrant.

We only use truffles from sources we know well and have used for years in both France and Italy. We feature three species of fresh Truffles; tuber magnatum pico, the true white truffle, tuber melanosporum, the true winter black truffle and tuber uncinatum, often referred to as the Summer or Burgundy truffle. Other species just don’t compare, and they’re not worth the money. We do not use truffles from China or Oregon although we look forward to the success of American truffle plantations in the next few years. The truffles from the Himalayas are technically truffles, but their flavor pales in comparison to the real thing. Sadly many people don't know the difference and are either easily fooled, or worse, mix them in with real truffles to cut costs.

We also don't use "truffle oil"  or "truffle salt" at La Toque. It is a fraud and is now shunned by good chefs who know better. You can press a million dollars worth of truffles as hard as you want and still not get a single drop of oil. Truffles have been savored for millennia but truffle oil is a new phenomenon. It is no coincidence that "truffle oil" appeared a few decades ago, around the same time scientists successfully duplicated the chemical compounds in the laboratory that are responsible for truffles legendary aroma. You can infuse some fresh truffle flavor into oil or butter, but it doesn't keep any better than fresh truffles which are best consumed within 10 days of hunting. Because of this very short shelf life, real truffle flavored oil is simply not a viable product. Commercially produced truffle oil is invariably artificially flavored, no matter how fancy the bottle or prestigious the purveyor. It is simply too good to be true. Real “home made” truffle flavored oil or butter is always subtle in flavor unlike the powerful products sold commercially. That little scrap of "truffle" at the bottom of the jar is often from an inferior species, and in any event, it takes much more than a little crumb of truffle to infuse oil with any amount of flavor.

For more information on truffles I recommend three books; The Little Book of Truffles published by Flammarion, Truffles Ultimate Luxury Everyday Pleasure by Rosario Safina and Judith Sutton published by Wiley and The Truffle Book by Gareth Renowden published by Limestone Hills Publishing.

I also recommend that you visit simplyflavors.com, my favorite and most trusted purveyor of fresh truffles.

You can see our truffle menus from previous years by clicking on the links below.
Current Menu  |  Previous Menu One  |  Previous Menu Two