'Sexy' truffle goes frigid

When London restaurant manager Enzo Cassini clubbed together some of his regular customers to spend £28,000 ($75,600) on the world's second-largest Italian white truffle, he could be forgiven for assuming he was on to a winner.

The arrival of the 850-gram fungus at Zafferano, the Michelin-starred Italian restaurant in Knightsbridge favoured by gourmand glitterati from Madonna to Bill Clinton, drew salivating admirers from Paris and Madrid. Queues formed in search of the taste described by Mr Cassini as "earthy, sexy and an aphrodisiac", at a cost of £600 ($1620) per micro-sliced sprinkling.

Media were tipped off that among those waiting to sample the truffle were Gwyneth Paltrow and the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, who were thought to have been part of the syndicate which bought the truffle at a charity auction.

Even when the head chef, Andy Needham, left the mushroom in a refrigerated safe for four days, taking the keys with him, staff remained confident that the stage was set for a publicity coup. Imagine the horror when Mr Needham took the truffle from its storage and found it had gone off.

A downcast Mr Cassini said afterwards: "The problem was that after we received the truffle, it was displayed for four or five days because so many people wanted to come and see it ... Then Andy had to go away for a few days. When he came back, we found our poor little truffle had gone past its best. It was very sad."

The Italian white truffle, considered by connoisseurs as superior to the French black truffle, was found by a farmer and his dog near San Miniato, a Tuscan village 40km from Florence that accounts for 25 per cent of Italy's white truffle production.

The only individual to sample the truffle was Nick Curtis, of the London Evening Standard newspaper, who declared its flavour "halfway between that of a smoked cheese and strong mushroom".

Mr Cassini placed an order for an extra kilogram of the fungus to present to his clients. He said: "We had one of our celebrities in last night and served them with the new truffles. They just laughed when they heard the news. We are very sorry."

Zafferano staff have chosen to return the truffle whence it came by burying it in Mr Needham's garden in Fulham, west London.

Mr Cassini said: "It died a very happy truffle - back in the ground, unsliced. We piled some stones on top, like a tomb. Hopefully next year it will have spawned some little truffles."

- Independent