La Toque has long been known for our extravagant truffle menus. We just wrapped up our 28th Annual All Truffle Menu in early March. It was another very good and long season this year. The last few truffles have been made into butter and stashed in the freezer to pull out for a treat sometime this summer when we’re really beginning to miss them.

Nature willing of course, we look forward to our next fresh truffles in the fall. By August we should have a good indication of the kind of season we’re looking at. Summer rain is bad for Barolo but good for fall and winter truffles. Typically by early October we start seeing fully ripe truffles. We usually feature both Burgundy Truffles, Tuber Uncinatum, a mild earthy milk chocolate colored truffle, as well as the true White Truffle, Tuber Magnatum Pico with its legendary powerful perfume. These two truffles will keep us busy until December when we will start to monitor the ripeness of black winter truffles, Tuber Melanosporum. The earliest winter truffles are rarely very good although this past year we had great ripe black truffles two weeks before Christmas. The heart of Black Truffle season is January and February. Our 29th Annual All Truffle Menu is set to begin on Friday January 7th, 2011.

We get all of our truffles from sources we know well and have used for years in both France and Italy. We do not use truffles from China. These small truffles from the Himalayas are true 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 save money.

We also don't use "truffle oil" at La Toque unless we make it ourselves. First of all it is a misnomer, truffles contain no fat. You can press a million dollars worth of truffles as hard as you want and still not get a single drop of oil. Truffle oil is a relatively 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 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 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 two books; The Little Book of Truffles published by Flammarion, and Truffles Ultimate Luxury Everyday Pleasure by Rosario Safina and Judith Sutton published by Wiley.

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.
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