$50,000 Prized Truffle Left to Rot

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The New York Sun

Last month, a coalition of the willing believed to have included Gwyneth Paltrow and Roman Abramovich stumped up about $50,000 to help a favorite restaurant, Zafferano, acquire at auction a white truffle of fabulous consequence. It was brown on the outside, weighed nearly two pounds, and resembled an enormous knobbly potato. Contributors to the bid were to feast at the restaurant on dishes perfumed with this ambrosial fungus. Now, they have been thwarted. The chef went on vacation, took the keys to the truffle cabinet with him, and the truffle rotted. It was returned, with ceremony, to the ground.

“Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, / And waste its sweetness on the desert air.” Thomas Gray’s lines — though ill-adapted to the musty and secretive world of the truffle — seem to acquire a poignant resonance in this case. But perhaps it was, nevertheless, for the best. The truffle — however delicious, however headily redolent of the most attractive of female pigs — could never quite have lived up to the idea of the truffle. Its deliciousness is in the mind, not on the palate. Our celebrity gourmets have nosed the matchless champagne of anticipation without ever having to sip the sour cava of fulfillment.


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