Fresh truffles that won’t break the bank
PRECIOUS and pungent fresh truffles are usually served sparingly so as not to overpower dishes — or drain customers’ bank accounts. But the funky fungus is laid on with copious abandon at new Oak Tuscan Truffle Lounge, a quirky West Village place for rich northern Italian cuisine. Owner-chef Rudy Accornero, a Rome-born Florentine, showers every sumptuous dish on the menu with 10 grams of fresh, shaved truffles — even the Maine lobster salad.
Accornero owns a small truffle company in Italy that sells to clients around the world. “It got me thinking, there’s no restaurant in New York that sells truffles from A to Z, from appetizers to dessert,” he tells The Post. “Let me be first to offer this fruit of the earth in every aspect."
Right now, Oak Tuscan Truffle Lounge offers the summer variety, harvested in May through August, from the Pisa area of Italy. He gets shipments sourced through his Italian company weekly and keeps the knobby, brain-like funguses at 38 degrees in a kitchen locker.
Summer truffles are less intense than pricier, aromatic white and black winter varieties, and have “relatively minimal flavor,” Accornero says. By comparison, white truffles boast a musky aroma that can knock you out, but with “delicate, almost neutral flavor,” while black truffles offer “both the strong smell and flavor.”
The summer truffles’ perfume greets you the moment you step inside what is perhaps the city’s skinniest sit-down restaurant. They lend a rugged, earthbound note to tagliolino cacio e
pepe ($34) brimming with melted pecorino and Parmesan cheeses. A chocolate-like tint emerges from the truffles atop 9 ounces of filet mignon Rossini ($55) that also sports a slab of seared foie gras. The tubers class up fried eggs and asparagus ($29), an otherwise modest brunch treat.
Menu prices reflect $1 per gram for summer truffles, although the chef often lays on more than 10 grams with no extra charge. When he introduces winter truffles in October, the cost will rise to $30 for 10 grams.
Go there now if you want to go home freshsmelling. While summer-truffle scent fades quickly, “white truffles stay in your clothes for days,” Accornero says, laughing. Open Monday through Saturday for dinner. 28 Greenwich Ave.; 646-864-0205