let lemons be angry

I had my first real truffle experience last night.

K and I never pass on the truffle fries if it's on a menu. And we figured that if truffle fries are only drizzled with truffle oil, which purportedly doesn't even contain true truffle, then the real thing shaved over a truffle cream dish should make us die on the spot.

The funniest thing is we didn't die.

We had a creamy, cold, light burrata cheese with a truffle heart, and we said, "A great delicate start."
Then our pasta and risotto came. We took a deep sniff, moved our noses closer to the plate, and took another deep sniff. "It's there."
We tasted it-- "Let's get the extra truffle shavings."
We ate the flakes. Nothing.

What had happened to us had been written about in many an article about truffles, if we had bothered to read up first. A disgruntled chef put it most succinctly: the "one-dimensional flavour" of artificial truffle oil was spoiling the truffle experience because, quite simply, that had become the expected flavour.

Actual black truffle, even this most pungent Perigord harvested in winter, smells more like a warm nut than the sensual, stinging oil we were used to. And eaten raw, is bland.

The food was good. Very good. And had we come to dinner to be educated on the truffle flavour, rather than seek for that common fastfood flavour, we might have tasted it. (Unless we were like another kind of consumer also written about in articles, the kind genetically unable to taste an important component of truffle.) But instead we were left bewildered, and a little sad, that we couldn't see the emperor's new clothes.

We came up with lots of analogies after our truffle dinner. It's like a young girl besotted by Hollywood dreams, only to find that life as a star is faintly dull. It's like a man always craving success, but when success is in hand, that's all there is. Or women whose idea of romance is based on korean dramas. Or men whose expectations of a woman's body is based on Playboy and all the plastic-surgeried, Photoshopped fakes. A typical tale, a sad story. "The dream is more fulfilling than the reality of it," was my mournful conclusion.

The bright side is, we prefer truffle fries. And that's way more affordable. :D


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http://casatartufo.com/ is a cosy Italian fine-dining place at Forum, opened by my one of my big boss's impossibly gorgeous daughters. It's also the first restaurant in Singapore to have a truffle-centred menu all year round.