Room 39’s Ted Habiger is wishing for a pocketful of black truffles
Outside the village of Carignan, France, a winemaker extracts a crumpled piece of aluminum foil from his pocket. He slowly pulls back the foil, and chef Ted Habiger is shocked to see a pound of black truffles valued at nearly $1,000.
“He had just dug them up on his property that morning, “Habiger says. “He pointed to the very tree where he had dug.”
The chef is sitting in the dining room of his restaurant, Room 39, in Kansas City, a few weeks after returning from a wine-tasting trip through France. But he’s reliving that moment with the truffles, the location of which are typically guarded family secrets.
“You know, people don’t even show me where their morels grow in Kansas City,” Habiger remembers telling the winemaker.
“Well, we all have guns here.”
