Where have the truffles gone?

Can one restaurant meal lead you to everything you need to know about a place? In Italy's misty, mountainous Piedmont region, the answer is a resounding yes.

And I'm not talking about some fancy Michelin-starred establishment that every guidebook tells you to visit. Just dinner at a simple place, an osteria down the street from where you're staying.

And that's without getting what I wanted to eat. Because I was after something pretty specific. One of my main reasons for visiting Alba, a town of medieval red-brick towers, was to try to sample the region's famed white truffles.

Alba is Italy's truffle capital. It's the centre of Italian chocolate country too, as the headquarters of the multinational Ferrero company. And it's the heart of the magical Langhe area, a classic Italian landscape of grape-covered hills, medieval towns and dramatic castles. But back to the truffles.

On a truffle hunt

I had never eaten the succulent, super-pricey delicacies - and that was a big, embarrassing gap in my Italian identity. I was determined to right this culinary wrong in Alba rather than at some fancy Italian restaurant in the States. I knew, of course, that the height of truffle season - usually September through December - was over. But I had heard that last year, truffles were eaten in this gastronomic wonderland late into January. And January was the only time I had.

So I, and a colleague travelling with me, went on a truffle hunt. The manager of our hotel suggested some places we could try. He warned us not to order black truffles, which he said were as common as potatoes.

We wandered through the cobblestone streets of the medieval part of Alba. Not a white truffle in sight. We saw one black truffle dish, but I wasn't falling for that.

A snub ... and more

When we got to the last of the manager's suggestions, Osteria Lalibera, with still no white truffles on view, I decided to just go in and find out.

You would think I had asked owner Flavia Boffa if I could buy her first-born.

"Tartufi bianchi? Now?'' she asked incredulously. Even though we were both speaking in Italian, she eyed me suspiciously.

"Well, I was hoping, maybe,'' I stammered. "I saw them in some of the shops in town.'' She snorted. "Those aren't Albese truffles. Those are Tuscan truffles. Unscrupulous people are trying to pass those off as the real thing.''

First lesson

She pulled out a thick book all about truffles and explained what the problem was. The precious white subterranean funghi are 75 per cent water, she said, pointing to a big chart.

Diners were waiting to pay their bills. I hadn't said we were going to eat there. In fact, I had given the opposite impression - that I hadn't given up on finding a place that could satisfy my desire. But she didn't seem to care.

First Alba lesson: They take this truffle thing seriously.

Boffa was able to convince me that I wasn't going to be able to eat real Alba truffles. And I thought it might kill her if I accidentally downed one of those Tuscan fakes. So we decided to stay.

The restaurant was just two rooms, softly lit, with half a dozen small tables in each room. On the crisp white tablecloth was something I had never seen in Italy before.

Long, hollow, flaky breadsticks - almost three feet long apiece - had been placed on the table along with several pieces of bread. No bread basket, no plastic wrappers, just right there on the tablecloth, arranged just so. It looked like a still-life painting.

Second lesson: This part of Italy is really classy - and quite original.

Whining and dining

Boffa handed us the one-page menu and the 22-page wine list.

"We'd like a nice bottle of red, but we can't spend a fortune,'' I said. She made some suggestions and then scurried off, we thought to let us contemplate what she had told us.

But no. She was soon back with two big wineglasses and an open bottle of 1998 Barolo from the Mauro Molino winery in the nearby hilltop town of La Morra. It was one of the cheapest Barolos on her list.

"I think you'll like this,'' she said, pouring us each a taste, without asking permission. Lesson three: They really know their wines around here, and they're completely confident you'll like them. (And you do. Because they're really good.)

Piedmontese cuisine can be heavy, elaborate and almost French-like - cream and butter play leading roles, and hearty risottos are common. I ordered vitello tonnato - thin slices of veal carpaccio served with a light green mayonnaise sauce--followed by fried lamb cutlets with fried calf's brains and artichokes. Sounds heavy, but the batter was light and heavenly, and the amount of food was just right. My friend opted for a warming chickpea soup and a fabulous cheese plate.

As we were waiting for our food, and contentedly sniffing, swirling and sipping our noble Barolo, I told Boffa I was upset that many of the wineries of the Langhe seemed to be closed in January.

Castle beckons

I had wanted to visit the castle in Barolo, a hilltop town near Alba that bears the same name as the wine. The castle, one of about a dozen within a half-hour drive of Alba, houses an enoteca, a centre for buying Piedmontese wines. I could just imagine the rich bottles of wine lined inside a medieval room in Barolo's castle. But it's closed in January, too.

Boffa had a solution.

She pointed to a distinguished gentleman at the table next to us. "He's a big wine producer in this area,'' she mouthed, sotto voce. "Vaira wineries.''

Since our tables were close (Boffa told us she does that on purpose to encourage conversation), we were soon chatting with Aldo Vaira and his son Beppe, whose winery outside Barolo produces about 150,000 bottles of mostly red, but also some white, wine a year.

Invitation

He invited us to visit his winery the next day, which we did. Twenty-year-old Beppe, fluent in three languages as well as the language of wine, stayed with us for hours, taking us from the family's vineyards to their ornate cellars to show us how the wine is made and preserved. We saw the cellar's dramatic stained-glass windows by an Italian artist.

We tasted many of the Vaira wines that afternoon (spitting most of them out, I promise) while listening to young Beppe speak passionately about his family's love of winemaking. He had us mesmerised.

But back to the night before.

The final lesson

After Vaira and Beppe left the restaurant, an Italian thirtysomething couple at the table on our other side started talking to us, too. They were teachers in Torino and had driven 40 minutes to Alba just to eat dinner at Boffa's simple, understated restaurant. And even though they were thin and beautiful in that Italian way, they tucked in three courses and dessert (it's all about portion size). Plus a nice bottle of red wine, of course.

As we were paying our check up front, kwe started talking to another gentleman who was also paying his bill. He was a hotshot at the sprawling Ferrero chocolate factory in town, and he invited us to come see how they make Nutella.

Final Alba lesson: Everything starts with dinner. And you don't need to eat truffles to have a magical night.