If you’re fed up with the low-carb craze and crave potatoes again, Daniel, one of the Big Apple’s most highly rated restaurants, has just the thing. No, not an ordinary dish of potatoes, but a baked potato with truffles for only $160, which is 15% higher than the $140 it charged in 2003.

If $160 is too stiff for you, Daniel also offers appetizer portions of pasta or risotto with truffles for just $120.

These are some of the epicurean delights available in this year’s truffle season, which has just kicked off and runs through December. This year, the season – an estimated $3 million business for the city’s restaurants and specialty food stores that sell truffles – offers a mixture of good news and bad news.

The good news, restaurateurs tell me: Lots of rain in Italy in August and September produced great soil and one of the best truffle crops in years, and so lovers of this delicacy will be treated to delicious truffles that are firm, white, and have a strong aroma. The bad news: Another hike in truffle prices this year, largely reflecting the rise in the euro versus the greenback, which is prompting some top-flight restaurants to boost the prices of their truffle dishes about 15% to 25% from a year ago.

Take Primavera, an Upper East Side Italian delight and a popular dining spot for the rich and famous, such as Dan Rather, Madonna, Joe Torre, Mick Jagger, George Pataki, Jack Nicholson, and Sandy Weill.

Obviously these folks can afford to ante up the big bucks for those pricey dishes laced with a shaving of white truffles, such as pasta, risotto, veal, scrambled eggs, and salads, and that’s precisely what they’ll be asked to do this year, observes Primavera owner Nicola Civetta.

He notes that due to the rising euro, which is sporting about a 25% premium to the dollar, Primavera is paying $2,800 a pound for truffles from Alba (rated the best in the world).This is substantially above a year ago, when he managed at times to pay as little as $1,600 to $1,900 a pound. As result, Mr. Civetta has boosted the price of his truffle dishes, such as a portion of risotto or pasta, to an average $98 this year from an average $79 last year.

Initial truffle demand is so strong, Mr. Civetta and several other restaurateurs tell me, that many customers specifically call up and ask if the restaurant is serving truffles. If the answer is no, the frequent response, I’m told, is “I’ll see you when you get them in.”

Mr. Civetta, whose restaurant does about $3 million a year, derives around $60,000 of its volume in seasonal truffle sales. He observes that because of the cost factor and the limitations on what you can charge, truffles are not the lucrative business you might think they are. But you’ve got to offer them, he said, because people who like fine food expect them. Truffles, he notes, are so popular that each year he gets groups from Oklahoma and Boston who make special trips to New York to try the restaurant’s latest truffle offerings.

“Truffles sell faster than French fries,” said Djona Valjovic, a waiter at Scalinatella, another popular Italian east side eatery “Our customers can’t seem to get enough of them.”

Marco Pipolo, one of the restaurant’s owners, added that “whatever truffles we order, we sell. It’s a tough item,” he went on, “because it’s so expensive. It’s the diamond of Italian cuisine and people either love it or hate it.” For truffles to work, he notes, they’ve got to be fresh, and this means ordering them every week. A dish with truffles at Scalinatella runs about $80.

Il Postino, another busy East side Italian restaurant, is paying $2,200 a pound for truffles, versus as low as $1,600 a year ago. One of its owners, Luigi Russo, also blames the increase on the rising euro, which is translated into a price of $90 for a truffle dish or $50 for a half-portion. Truffle demand is very strong this year, but that’s the case every year, he said.

Interestingly, Guiseppa Bruno, the owner of Sistina, another well-regarded upper east side Italian eatery, takes issue with many of his peers, noting he’s paying less, not more, for his Alba truffles – $1,800 a pound, versus $2,400-$2,500 a year ago. Sure, the euro is up, he said, but so is the number of truffles because of more rain and good soil. Last year, he charged $120 for a truffle dish – this year, $80.

So that’s this year’s truffle picture. Enjoy…and bring a fat wallet.