Truffles

I am sitting in my cramped apartment office tallying last night’s receipts. Revenues had been on a steady climb when I opened La Petite Café in 2019. It had been voted best new bistro by the Niagara Cuesta Times. And then, COVID. I refuse to be yet one more restauranteur whining about the devastation to the industry as a result of government-imposed indoor dining restrictions and the closing of the border. My café’s impending demise pales in comparison with being seriously ill or losing a loved one. I know because my mother was taken from me in 2020. A Highlander, she had always been the rock, the strong one, but COVID did not care. It snatched her from me in her early sixties. It was little consolation, but she left me a small inheritance. With those dollars and occasional loans from friends, I have eked out an existence these past couple of years. With the mandatory testing and quarantining, this past summer was slower, relying heavily on the locals and Ontario tourists, who fortunately were restless after two years of “house arrest”. Canadians are peripatetic and the café benefitted from their wanderlust. Finally, in October all the border restrictions are lifted and the tourists from Western New York and beyond return, drawn in part by grape harvest festivities. Thanksgiving holiday for Canadians gave an additional boost with Columbus Day (or Indigenous People’s Day) school holidays in the United States provoking family visits to the falls followed by a drive north to Niagara-on-the-Lake. This is where I make my home and business, where the Niagara River dumps its millions of gallons into Lake Ontario.

It is early morning, and I am on my “second cup of coffee”, which always makes me hum the eponymous Gordon Lightfoot tune. Last night’s dinnertime chits were okay and with the upcoming Christmas holidays, I might start making a small profit. I open my checkbook. I already know the balance, so it has become more nervous habit than otherwise. There has been a footrace between the dollars left by my mom, and the drain of a business with more expense than revenue. My cubbyhole office is fashioned from a cupboard under the stairs of this old stately home. I have half the ground floor. Mine and the other four apartments have been cobbled together with the goal of maximizing rent rather than aesthetics or utility. One saving grace, my apartment is off the front porch, and I have my own entrance. Niagara-on-the-Lake is a safe, desirable place, yet I decided long ago to replace the doorbell with one of those devices that combines motion detector, camera, doorbell, and something of a walkie-talkie. My calculation is that it will discourage porch pirates. The long hours at the café mean that any FedEx, UPS, or Canada Post package could have a long wait for my return.

My smartphone lets out the familiar motion detection chime. I press the alert which launches the app. The porch is dark. Goodness, I am glad Daylight Savings Time ends shortly. Not only will the sun make its appearance at a reasonable hour each morning, but dinner guests show up earlier with little else to do at dusk on a chilly evening. The checks are bigger with cocktail hour and hors d’oeuvres starting sooner. My infrared camera shows a box on the porch, but no delivery person. I click from live view to history mode. The latest video launches. One can make out the faintest of a something akin to a large bird flying into the night. By now, I am walking down the hallway towards the front door. I unlock the door and am met with a pungent, earthy, and familiar odor. And yet, I can’t quite place it. Perhaps, because it is all incongruent. It is out of place. It brings back memories of Hyde Park and its Culinary Institute. Or the restaurant kitchen in Montreal where I trained as a “wet behind the ears” graduate. There are no markings on the box, no shipping label, no identification. It is the simplest of cardboard boxes, carefully sealed on top and bottom with clear packing tape. I lift the box. It has little weight. I shake it softly. Whatever is inside is not fragile. It rustles more than rattles. We, box and I, make our way to the kitchen. I grab a 10-inch chef’s knife from the block, always at the ready. I slice the tape. My CIA instructors would be horrified if they could see me violating a perfectly honed instrument suddenly refashioned as a box cutter. As the box lids separate, that enigmatic aroma hits me like a hammer in each nostril. My olfactory memory kicks in. It was an autumn day on the banks of the Hudson River. The oaks and maples were on fire, a spectacular display of yellow, orange, and red. The instructor was holding a single black jewel between forefinger and thumb. It was my virginal experience with the mythical subterranean fungi that has been the “diamond of the kitchen” for centuries. We passed the truffle from student to student, mesmerized. Excited, with anticipation, I peer into the box and unlike my Hyde Park experience, there are a dozen or so tuber magnatum staring back at me. I had seen pictures of white truffles in my textbooks or images on the Internet. Never have I seen one “in the flesh”, much less a box full. I pull out my kitchen scale, set a glass bowl on top, set the tare, and carefully place each truffle in the bowl. With each added gem, the grams climb stopping at exactly 1000 – not 999 or 1001, but 1000, a kilogram of white truffles. I quickly do the calculation. Restaurants in Toronto are charging $12 per gram for truffles shaved on top of complementary dishes. Here in the Niagara region, I can get away with $10, especially at the holidays. A cool $10,000 right to the bottom line. It would put La Petite Café on the map for great cuisine. I go to social media and start promoting my marsala and mushroom risotto with optional white truffles.

Early the next morning, I am adding up the previous evening’s tickets. Last night’s take was double the average. My front door monitor sings out its familiar tune. I rush to the door partly to see if I can identify my benefactor, but mostly in anticipation of another windfall. I open the door and sitting on the stoop is a dog, maybe 30 pounds, smiling at me. It has a brown head, a roan body and a saddle the exact dark brown colour as the head. It looks like a “doodle” dog so much in vogue, maybe half-poodle, half-Portuguese water dog – a Portudoodle? On its collar is one of those tags that are paired with a microchip and another stainless-steel tag, laser-engraved with the name “Truffles”. I turn that tag over expecting an address or phone number, but nothing. The dog jauntily walks in and heads to the kitchen. I grab a cereal bowl and fill it from the tap, set it on the floor. Truffles laps it up and then sticks her paw in the bowl, thus turning it over. And so, my day begins.

I take Truffles to the restaurant where she is all the rage with Cassie, my sous chef and Maria, server extraordinaire. I have since entered the microchip serial number into PetMaxx. Indeed, she is Truffles. She is Canadian. And she is not a “doodle” of any blend. Truffles is a Lagotto Romagnolo, which despite my years watching Westminster, I cannot recall. Thanks to Google and the Internet, I learn that Lagotto is an ancient Italian breed. Lagotto translates roughly to “water dog” (leave it to the Italian language to turn the mundane into the exotic – I remember falling in love with the Maserati Quattroporte. I dare Chevrolet to introduce a new model with the moniker “Four Door”). While Lagotti are great water retrievers, they are most closely identified with hunting truffles in the woodlands of northern Italy. Cassie and Maria stuff towels into a laundry bag creating a temporary bed for Truffles, who politely lies on it in the corner, looking out at the patrons. She quickly becomes a celebrity. I regale my customers with my new-found Lagotto knowledge while carefully shaving three grams of white fungi “gold” on top of the risotto. Philip, a regular, gives Truffles a rub behind her ears and becomes her lifetime friend. “Is he a ‘doodle’?” This has become a common refrain. “No, she is a Lagotto.” I give my standard tutorial, which is expanded to include the fact that pups start at $5,000 and can even fetch as much as $10,000. “She showed up at my doorstep around 5 AM. She is microchipped, so I reported her as a found dog. Waiting for the owner to claim her.” Philip looks lost in thought. “I think I have seen that dog walking at Mississauga Beach with E. W. McCormick. You must know E. W. Everybody does, the CEO of Whitney McCormick Medical Testing in St. Catharines. Made a killing selling COVID tests to the Canadian and U.S. governments.” I run a mental film clip of my patrons. Only two candidates emerge. The first, medical-coat-shod, I assumed was a pharmacist. The second, and more likely, is professorial and quiet. Usually sits in the corner and always orders a Grey Goose martini. “Philip, I can only think of two men that might fit the bill.” Philip shrugged his shoulders. The bistro is packed with Christmas shoppers seeking refuge from the bustling throng on Queen Street. The mystery of the white truffles, Truffles, and E.W. must wait.

The dinner shift behind me and the bistro cleaned, I head back to my apartment with Truffles obediently heeled at my left calf. Suddenly, instead of making the right turn towards the river, she makes a left. I have no leash and have relied on her well-trained self to go where I go. Now, she is the lead, and I am working hard to keep up with her. It occurs to me that she could run much faster but chooses otherwise. We are heading towards the lake and the beach. I can see the lights of Toronto on the clear winter horizon and thus we are approaching our Mississauga Beach destination when Truffles makes a hard left down Palatine Place. A final left is followed by a walk up the governor’s drive to the front door of a center entrance Georgian mansion. As we walk onto the first step of the pillared portico, the door swings open. The scene would only be complete with a tuxedoed butler. But instead, I am greeted by a beautiful woman, about my age. Her soft brunette ringlets fall randomly on an emerald, green sweater, the same colour as her eyes. Her pearl necklace dances off the sweater and I cannot but notice that her wool slacks are the same hue. Truffles’ pawprints are decorating the ivory wool with each greeting. “Hi, I am Elizabeth. I was wondering when you two would finally show up.” “E.W.?”, is all my spent lungs can manage. “Ah, yes, Elizabeth Whitney, Whitney is my mother’s maiden name. Would you like a glass of wine. I have some Riesling from our vineyard down the road in Virgil. Or, perhaps, a Cabernet Franc, instead?” I do not need her little memory jogger. She is a woman with such natural charisma, who owns any room within which she is present. I let out a little chuckle. “Yes, I remember you very clearly. You ordered the lobster special. I asked if you would like to pair with a Riesling or Cabernet Franc. You responded, ‘Anything from Elizabeth Cellars?’. I think I said something akin to ‘With lobster? You can do better than that.’ You were the hostess for a table of eight. Philip was one of your guests. Suppose he is your accomplice?” She is grinning ear-to-ear. Now I know where Truffles gets her smile.

We talk into the wee hours. Truffles lays by the fireplace. I should be exhausted, but I am invigorated and enthralled. Turns out E.W. was getting her Ph.D. at Cornell in Ithaca at the same time I was at CIA, two Canadians beginning their adult lives in New York. As the sun begins to shine through the mansion’s floor to ceiling windows, I ask her, “Why go to all this trouble? I am an ordinary guy with average prospects. You, on the other hand…” I just let it hang there. It is obvious that she is “out of my league.” She hesitates. I guess it is because she knows the answer but is assessing whether to share. Finally, “At first, I wanted to come up with a clever scheme as payback for your slight. I found myself obsessing about more and more elaborate ways to trick you. Well not so much trick, but metaphorically ‘kick your butt’. In truth, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I don’t do that – become distracted with men or romance or anything other than work. Thoughts of revenge turned to imaginative ways to get and keep your attention. Truffles and I were sitting here much as we all are now, except without you. For the first time in my life, I was lonely. Looking at my Lagotto, I thought what better way to provoke someone culinary than a phantom box of white truffles. Having Truffles fetch you was icing on the cake. All that money spent on training her finally paid off. So, here we are. Your move, Chef.”