Annual Truffle Menus

La Toque is famous for our annual truffle menus. Holiday season around here means truffle season. We are now winding down our our 26th Annual All Truffle Menu. It has been a great long season and we will continue to offer the full truffle menu on request for the next few weeks, as long as great truffles are still available.

Fresh white truffles, "Tuber magnatum pico ," come into season for a few months in the fall. This year got off to a late start. The early truffles were small for the most part and very expensive, but the aroma was fantastic. The best truffles were from "Alto Umbria" between Citta de Castello and Gubbio. The combination of snow and striking Italian truck drivers at Christmastime brought this years white truffle season to an early close.

As the white truffle season winds down, Black Winter Truffles, "Tuber melanosporum," begin to appear in the market. The first ones in early December are rarely ripe enough to be very good. The heart of the season begins in January when we begin to see black truffles with great aroma. This years black truffle crop yielded some surprisingly large specimens. 

We're looking forward to the move to our new home at the Westin Verasa Napa in the fall. In addition to the truffle menus, we are planning to offer a new program we're calling "Truffle camp" which will include hands on truffle cooking classes with the chef, visits to local purveyors and wineries. We wil finalize the details later this summer.

You may click on the links below to view some of our favorite previous truffle menus.

Beware of chefs serving "Chinese" black truffles, "tuber indicum." They are black, they are technically truffles, but they cost about 40 dollars a pound and they're not even worth that.  Sadly, the temptation to cheat is too great for some unscrupulous vendors and chefs to withstand. We only serve fresh "tuber melanosporum" from either France or Italy.

 We do not use "truffle oil" at La Toque unless we make our own from scratch. Commercial truffle oil is not truffles - it's a rip- off. It is a crutch, a way to save money and stretch "flavor." Although it has a strong flavor resembling truffles, even the "best" "truffle oil" is heavy and clumsy, leaving a stain on the palate which ruins the rest of the meal. It simply cannot match the magic of true fresh truffles.