Three out of the last five years, I’ve visited Italy in October, right in time to enjoy white and black winter truffles, known as tartufo. This year, we experienced both in Umbria, considered “il cuore verde” or the green heart of Italy due to its rolling hills, many vineyards, olive tree groves and more. And it does not disappoint.
Our home base was Perugia, the magical capital of Umbria with wide, walkable streets, amazing restaurants and a laid-back vibe where you can really experience “La Dolce Vita.” There were no crowds, just Italians and international students speaking Italian enjoying the simple pleasures of caffe, socializing on the steps of the duomo near the center of town and enjoying outdoor meals with several generations around the table.
And tartufo, white and black, were prominently featured on menus. At La Taverna, Chef Claudio is serving up both traditional Umbrian and evolved fare, along with a big personality he takes from table to table. We started with an onion tart with freshly grated black truffles over it, a light and flavorful appetizer that left plenty of room for the next course, housemade (fatto di casa, in Italian) ravioli filled with truffles and parmigiano with another layer of unctuous goodness shaved on top. Each ravioli was a flavor explosion of the senses — taste, smell as well as sight.
The meal was topped off by a complimentary housemade chocolate liqueur, fitting given the chocolate festival starting the following week. After all, Perugia is the birthplace of Perugina chocolates. To learn more about the woman-founded chocolate empire, watch the PBS series Luisa Spagnoli. That said, I recommend passing on the tour of the Perugina factory, now owned by Nestle — an anathema to the people of Perugia who had such pride in this being an Italian company based in their city.
We enjoyed tagliatelle with black truffles in Spello at Enoteca Properzio, a wine store that also serves food and provides a delicious wine tasting that introduces wines most of us wouldn;t know otherwise. I’ll do a whole separate column about the wines we discovered here, many of which were shipped home to keep the delight going. Note that none of these truffle pastas are served with parmigiano as it would be an anathema to the locals to dilute the flavor of the fungus with anything other than the saliva in your mouth and a fine glass of wine.
We had one of the best meals of our trip at Ristorante Da Cesarino in Perugia, where we enjoyed white truffles over perfectly buttered tagliatelle. After enjoying a delicious lunch here, we returned for our final meal in Perugia and were impressed the owner and the waiter remembered us and what we ate from a few days earlier. We started dinner with mozzarella lightly battered in egg and sauteed, each bite offering a silky mouth feel. The tagliatelle con tartufo bianco was perfection, hard to imagine anything more decadent yet simple and satisfying. The white truffles are lighter in flavor, not just color. If I compared the two to fabrics, the white is cashmere and the black is wool. They’re both great, but quite different.
Quick note: I was surprised to read less-than-great reviews about Da Cesarino on Yelp and Trip Advisor. My husband and I are tough critics and found the food here to be above par with service to match. So good, we ate there twice.
