White Truffle Season Has Arrived

by John Kessler / Chicago Magazine / December 13, 2023

A new restaurant in North Center is the best place to enjoy them right now.

This week I want to tell you about the best place to eat white truffles right now (spoiler alert: Il Milanese Ristorante), but first let’s talk truffles. 

Several months ago, after shopping at Fresh Market Place in Bucktown, I came across a shopping cart filled with bags of truffle potato chips set up by the exit. “Free” said a sign stuck in the cart. Just get these out of here; no one wants them.

I don’t pass on free, so I brought a bag home, ripped it open, and got blasted in the face with the smell of 2,4-dithiapentane, the lab-produced chemical used to approximate the smell of wild tubers. One year Mariano’s handed out bags of truffle popcorn at the James Beard Awards at the Lyric Opera, and when you walked into the theater the smell hung in the air like wet dog fur at a grooming salon. Real truffles smell like this compound in the way lemons, I suppose, smell like Pledge furniture polish. Don’t confuse them, and you may discover actual truffle love. Read more HERE