Prized the world over and priced accordingly, the elusive white truffle has never been what you’d call a cheap date.
So how, exactly, has the stuff of food snob fever dreams found its way onto the menu at Shake Shack?
The burger chain’s new White Truffle Burger sounds promising enough — a Fontina cheeseburger, topped with a “real white truffle sauce made with Regalis organic white truffle oil,” according to the menu.
But does that make it a white truffle burger?
Only in their dreams.
The heavily hyped product, currently devouring the swivel-headed food media’s attentions like a ravenous extraterrestrial, is sold for a seemingly reasonable $9.99, versus $7.29 for the basic Shack Burger.
A word of advice, after tasting the new creation for myself: Stick with the original and bank the $2.70 savings to help pay for your next $55 bowl of pasta — with actual white truffle shavings.
The newest dish to toss the t-word around as a marketing ploy isn’t a total impostor, to be fair. Both Shake Shack and Regalis, the California farm that makes the oil, swear that it contains no chemical flavoring agents, like those commonly used in “truffle oil,” and we’ll have to take them at their word.
According to Regalis, the stuff is made with “Arbequina [a sweet variety] extra-virgin olive oil that is infused with fresh white truffles from Le Marche, Italy,” possessed of a “rich and creamy texture with an earthy finish.”
Uniquely pungent white truffles can overwhelm the richest dish if not used in moderation. Unfortunately, the eyedropper’s-worth of their essence in the Shack burgers would not overwhelm a single-cell paramecium.
In fact, the mush being called a sauce atop the burger that I tried at the Eighth Avenue and 44th Street location tasted little of anything, real or fake.
When the odd bite did reveal some flavor, the cloying fungal note undercut whatever there was to enjoy in the dry, overcooked beef.
Weird.
The White Truffle ‘Shroom Burger I tried at the Fulton Transit Center was better, because as usual, the cheese-stuffed, crisp-fried Portobello mushroom was a delight.
Too bad, then, about the gummy topping applied to the top bun. Shack Sauce, or even plain ketchup and mustard would have been better.
Exactly how much white truffle is in Shake Shack’s white truffle sauce isn’t being revealed. But Rudy Accornero, owner and chef of truffle-heaven restaurant Tuscan Oak on Greenwich Avenue, was deeply curious about the secret sauce.
Accornero, a Shake Shack fan who has yet to taste the new addition to the menu, said that this winter, white truffles from Italy’s Piedmont region, considered the foodstuff’s spiritual home, are selling for up to $7,000 for 2.2 pounds.
Given that an 8.45-ounce bottle of Regalis Organic White Truffle Infused Extra Virgin Olive Oil sells for $39.95 at Williams-Sonoma, I wouldn’t bet the farm on its having much actual truffle content.
The Shack burgers would benefit from none at all.
