Polly Campbell
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Where to eat white truffles:

It's been a good year in the Piedmont of Italy for truffles. While Los Angeles restaurateur Joe Pytka recently paid $35,000 for a 2.2-pound truffle (the largest ever), that was at a charity auction, with most proceeds going to victims of the Italian earthquakes. The general price of white truffles this year is about $850-900 per pound, down from last year's prices of $1,600-$1,800 per pound.

What is it about a white truffle that commands such prices? For one thing, they're rare. No one has figured out to cultivate truffles, so they're still found hiding under oak and beech trees by trained pigs and dogs. And they are like nothing else in their intense aroma and flavor.

When Maisonette Executive Chef Bertrand Bouquin slices truffles with a tiny truffle mandoline cutter onto a dish in the dining room, everyone in the restaurant can smell the haunting, earthy, strong-but-ethereal aroma.

The white truffle is so aromatic and wonderfully flavored that most chefs like to use it in an extremely simple preparation.

At Maisonette, downtown, Chef Bouquin serves a baked potato, the insides mixed with truffle oil, cream and chives, with truffle shaved on the top. He also shaves truffle (in the dining room) over a mache salad with raw fresh mushrooms, dressed with truffle oil; tagliatelle pasta with a cream sauce that includes four Italian cheeses and a four-cheese ravioli. Appetizer-size dishes are $35; entrees are $45.

At Boca in Northside, Chef-owner David Falk serves scrambled eggs with chives on crostini, sauced with a fonduta di Voldostana (a fondue of Italian cheeses) and shaved truffles and a dish that comes from the famous Ristorante San Dominica in Imola, Italy: a single raviolo filled with ricotta and an egg yolk, poached and topped with shaved truffle. Either is $55.

The white truffle season should last through the middle of December at least, overlapping the French black truffle season.

E-mail pcampbell@enquirer.com