truffle dinners 2012

[Robert Lauriston]

Oliveto announced theirs, Nov. 13-16. Some past menus:

http://oliveto.com/2011truffledinner.pdf
http://www.oliveto.com/2010trufflemenu.pdf
http://oliveto.com/2009truffledinners.pdf
http://www.oliveto.com/truffledinner2...

Perbacco, Delfina, Palio, Alexander's Steakhouse, Farina, SPQR, Quince, and Masa's have had truffle dinners in past years.

[Thomas Nash]

Problem is that white truffles are running $200/ounce (according to a recent tweet from Far West Funghi). An ounce is a nice small sized truffle. I recall pastas in Italy with a quarter of a truffle per single serving. That was good!

But at $100 per couple, it just won't taste that good to me. Just like oysters at $2.75 or $3 don't taste as good as when they are under a dollar (Louisiana restaurants or shuck it yourself at Hog Island in Marshall).

Last time we went to an Oliveto truffle dinner, they were using a jeweler's diamond scale to measure out the shavings. I just couldn't get myself to buy enough to make it worth it.

A shame as nothing is better than white truffles!

[chefathome]

"A shame as nothing is better than white truffles."

Oh, how true! We go truffle hunting in Croatia and buy a few truffles at the truffle events there. But this year the cost was double what it was last year so we decided to forego this treat. This time.

[Robert Lauriston]

Yeah, the prices are nuts. Last year Oliveto was charging $10 a gram, which would be $60 per dish for not very generous shavings. Forbes reported a couple of weeks ago that restaurants in Monaco have cancelled their white truffle dinners.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/investor/...

[chefathome]

We were thinking about purchasing about 200 grams in Croatia as we usually do (to take to our house there and shave on risotto or pasta or eggs) but the minimum was 225 grams. When they told us the price we changed our minds quickly. One platter of white truffles was about $10,000 CDN. You could get a decent used car for that!