Scott Ian's Food Coma: It's Truffle Season

I spent the last week in Vegas gigging with Pearl, playing poker, eating like a maniac and... we announced the new singer for Anthrax. Crazy week, hence the late column.

I would dare say that you can eat as well in Vegas as anywhere in the world. Every top chef has a restaurant there. The only three-star Michelin restaurant in the country (Joel Robuchon’s) is in Vegas. Nobu Matsuhisa, Thomas Keller, Mario Batali, Michael Mina, Tom Colicchio, David Burke, Hubert Keller (all rock-star chefs) have restaurants there. Playing poker all day, eating decadent dinners with Phil Hellmuth, drinking until the wee hours and then starting over makes Scott a fat fuck. Being surrounded by this many great restaurants is always a good thing but at this time of year it’s even better because it’s truffle season. Mmmmmmmmm, underground ascomycetes. For those of you unfamiliar with truffles I’ll give you a short history:

When an angel poops, it poops truffles. These magical little lumps (the name truffle comes from the Latin word tuber, which actually means lump) grow underground (if you hadn’t figured it out by now they’re not chocolate) amongst the roots of oak and hazelnut trees. They grow mainly in the Piedmont region of Italy (white truffles), specifically in the countryside around the town of Alba and in the Perigord region of France (black truffles). The truffle farmers used to use pigs to sniff out these nuggets but the pigs would eat them so now they use dogs. Basically, truffles are hard to find and can only be found in the late fall. This is why they cost $3,500 a pound this year, $5,500 a pound if you buy them at Harrod’s. That’s like drug prices. And truffles are like drugs, because if you’ve even smelled truffles, you know what I’m talking about.

I was at Providence here in LA and chef Michael Cimarusti invited us into the kitchen and he pulled out a plastic container with what had to be a pound of the good shit. He told me to hold the container to my nose and open the lid. The intensity of the smell that rushed out was the sheer power of the earth. It smelled like ancient forests. It smelled like what food must have tasted like before chemicals, what the air smelled like before we polluted it. It smelled like what I’ve always imagined The Shire (dork) to smell like. It awakened a primeval feeling of a connection to the land that I’ve never felt before. All that from just smelling them. Eating them is all that and more as the power of the earth is released into your bloodstream and the euphoria takes over. What I’m sayin’ is, they getcha high. And once you’ve had them, you have to have them again. I’ve never smoked crack or meth or any of that fun stuff... truffles man, that’s my thing. No hangover, no tweaking and you don’t lose your teeth.

So go treat yourself this holiday season. Go get a steak and ask for some black truffles to be shaved over it. Get some pasta with white truffles or shave some over sea bass. Seriously, spoil yourself. You’re worth it.

Happy Holidays,
Scott



Scott Ian plays guitar for revolutionary metal band Anthrax and also for Pearl.

Artwork credit: Shepard Fairey