Vallozzi’s white truffle dinner is earthy, delicate and $200 per person

By Sono Motoyama / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Tartufo bianco d'Alba. Just the name is enough to send the mind wandering on an imaginary journey to the foothills of the Italian Piedmont region.

October and November are the months when the town of Alba holds its annual fair for white truffles, or Tuber magnatum, by its Latin name. They are fungi but unlike mushrooms, truffles grow underground.

Prices currently are running at about $300 per ounce for the seasonal delicacy, and can approach $5,000 a pound. Vallozzi’s Pittsburgh has managed to snag a pound of the rare fungus, and will celebrate with a white truffle dinner on Oct. 24.

Owner Julian Vallozzi says the restaurant held the dinner for seven years before the pandemic.

“This year we've tried to start revitalizing some of the fun events that we did pre-COVID,” he said. He has a group of eight or 10 regulars, who he expects will be back for the truffle dinner again this year.

He sources them from a supplier in New York, he said, who gets them directly from Alba.

Twenty lucky diners in all will get to taste the five-course dinner prepared by executive chef Robert Nettleship, which will include shavings of truffles in every course. The dishes will be paired with wines from the Piedmont region.

Not all of the courses had been finalized at press time, but Vallozzi said he expects they will include agnolotti, a stuffed pasta typical of Piedmont. Dessert will be a twist on an ice cream float, using vanilla ice cream, Birbet (a sweet sparkling wine from the region) and shavings of white truffle.

“The beauty of the cuisine, and especially with the truffle, it's very simple food,” Vallozzi said. “Typically when you serve the white truffle, you don't go heavy on other ingredients because you want the truffle to show through.”

The truffles will arrive just a couple of days before the dinner, to assure their freshness. Truffles that are past their prime lose their aroma.

Vallozzi laments the fact that many Americans don’t know and value the taste of a true truffle because of the overuse, as he sees it, of artificial truffle oil.

“The white truffle doesn't punch you in the mouth the way the artificial truffle oils do, but it has such a beautiful, earthy, more delicate flavor,” he said.

To experience its unique appeal, the time is now.

The five-course white truffle dinner will begin at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 24 at Vallozzi’s Pittsburgh, 220 Fifth Ave., Downtown. The cost is $200 per diner and reservations are required: vallozzis.com/tickets or call 412-394-3400 and reference “white truffle dinner.”

Sono Motoyama: [email protected]