For the second year in a row, New York City's high-end restaurants are freaking out because a hot summer in Italy has resulted in a shortage of white truffles, driving up the price for the fungus and depriving New York City's upscale residents of a beloved food item. Hmm, maybe it's not so bad then?
The Post reports that a hot summer in Italy in 2016 ruined the truffle crop, causing a shortage that jacked the price of white truffles from $40 per ounce to $250 per ounce. A Manhattan truffle importer told the paper that he was only able to get his hands on 40 pounds of white truffles, compared to the usual "hundreds" of pounds he can get and then sell to chichi restaurants in the city. As a result of the shortage, Manhattan restaurants have either stopped serving truffles altogether or are even resorting to serving black truffles, which are—the horror—cheap and common.
This year's truffle shortage freakout story is coming a bit later than the truffle shortage freakout story for 2015, which went down in October of that month. In that instance, it was the same story as this new truffle shortage: a hotter and drier Italian summer than normal caused the price for white truffles in America to shoot up to $2,000 per pound, meaning chefs couldn't buy enough truffles to please people looking to turn pizza and pasta into "luxury items worthy of triple-digit price tags."
In 2011, another hot summer ruined the white truffle crop and caused prices to jump anywhere from 20 percent to 100 percent over normal, non-shortage years. In 2007, there was also a truffle shortage that caused the price per pound of truffles to hit $3,500. That resulted in the famous Waverly Inn truffle mac and cheese to go from $55 to $85 per plate, which according to the Post took it from "an amusing punch line" to "just obscene."
And of course, not to drag everything back to the looming threat of climate change and the angry ocean slowly encroaching on dry land, but it turns out global warming does have at least a little bit to do with these semi-regular truffle shortages. While a 2010 story noted that climate change provided an opportunity to grow truffles in other areas of the world, it also pointed out that the prized European crop of truffles were declining even back then. And while chefs are turning to black truffles at the moment to replace white ones, the American Truffle Company looked into the future and saw black truffle producer Spain's climate remaining suitable for the fungus for less than 40 years. Ah well, maybe this is another pressing issue Ivanka Trump's friends can ask her to work on in the White House.
