Truffles Shuffle Towards Recession

That totem of culinary showing-off, the white truffle, is being dragged down towards the level of spam fritters by the financial crisis – an auction for this year’s finest specimens saw them going for no more than £20,000 a pop, rather than the record last year of nearly £200,000.

The auction was held in Tokyo last night at a $300-a-head white truffle dinner, with the biggest truffle being bought by Kazumasa Terada, head of Samantha Thavasa (no, us neither). Conspicuous by his absence was Damien Hirst, who, post-diamond skull, was quite the truffle-speculator – maybe he’s still waiting for a certain someone to pony up the dough?

Despite the reluctance to spend six figures on a white fungal blob, the mood in the luxury food market is apparently high. One Dutch luxury cookie manufacturer said of his product: “It’s like wine or champagne, it doesn’t matter what the price is”. Good luck with that philosophy when the recession bites, chum!

In other truffle-based Japanese credit crunch news, it’s been announced that you can buy a truffle-stuffed Christmas chicken, flown from France, for $850. What’s it taste like? ”The meat is not heavy but juicy, and there will be truffles between the flesh and meat, making it very fragrant.” It’s probably delicious, but with a global food crisis on, how can anyone actually enjoying eating something that obnoxiously extravagant?

Posted by Ben Beaumont-Thomas in Hot Money | November 10, 2008 10:17AM |