Planet Money - A trunk full of truffles (Update)

Episode Date: November 20, 2021

Truffles are one of the most expensive and sought after ingredients in the world. Today, we look back at our NYC adventure with a truffle smuggler and how the market has changed since we last talked to him. | Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Planet Money from NPR. Hey, everyone. Stacey here from Planet Money's daily podcast, The Indicator. So a few years back, I went on this kind of race against time with a truffle hunter. So truffles, those are the things that grow underground, like mushrooms, and restaurants pay huge amounts of money for tiny amounts of truffles. Well, we got back in touch with our truffle hunter again recently, and white truffle prices have hit an all-time high this year, making the notoriously rare and already expensive delicacy even harder

to come by. And changing the truffle-to-table industry maybe forever. So here's our episode from 2016, and be sure to stick around for an update at the end. Ian Priscaia tasted his first truffle when he was 15 years old. He was out at a fancy restaurant with a friend's family. The server came over and said, OK, we have a special for tonight, and it's a black truffle ravioli with a foie gras sauce. And it was music to my ears. So I should explain why a 15-year-old boy was this excited by black truffle ravioli. Ian's family had moved to the country, and Ian had started learning to forage for mushrooms.

And for foragers, truffles are almost mythical. They're really hard to find. They grow underground. They're only found in the wild. Nobody has ever figured out how to cultivate them. And nobody has figured out how to make anything else taste or smell quite like that. There's only one thing that tastes and smells like a truffle. And of course, truffles are ridiculously expensive. Ridiculously. Ian ordered the truffle dish. You know, it arrived. It was steaming. It was amazing.

There were shavings of truffle on the top. If you cut one of the ravioli in half, there were chunks of black truffle in the ravioli. I mean, it was earthy. It was nutty. It was mysterious. I mean, it was this unknown flavor that I had never tasted. That was it. I mean, it was, like like such a revelatory experience. You know, I can't even

remember like, you know, where I parked the car yesterday, but yet I remember everything about this moment. It was to this day, the best dish I've ever had in my life. Ian became obsessed. He took all his savings and used it to buy a kilo of truffles on an Italian website. But then when they arrived, he realized he had bought way too much. So he took the extra and tried to sell it to restaurants in town. I showed up on the doorstep with this bag of truffles and a scale I had bought at Target and an invoice book from Staples. And I said, Hi, I'm Ian. I have some truffles. Would you be interested in buying some truffles? And I don't know if it was the novelty of this, you know, buck tooth, 15 year old kid walking in the door with a bag full of truffles, but I sold them and I made a profit. And that moment is why we are standing in a walk-in refrigerator in Queens

at 11 o'clock in the morning on a Tuesday, cracking open a shipment of white truffles that Ian has just flown in from Italy. So how much money is in this box? I don't know, $20,000? There's $20,000 in this styrofoam box. Yep. $20,000, that's about eight pounds of truffles. And Ian's got to sell all eight pounds by 5 p.m. today. That's when restaurants start their dinner rush.

Also, truffles don't keep. Hi, and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Dan Pashman. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Today on the show, we follow Ian as he hustles his way through some of the finest kitchens in New York selling truffles. We battle traffic, parking cops, smugglers, penny-pinching chefs, and the cruel mistress of time. Also, we try to figure out what it is about truffles that makes people pay so much for them. Before Ian can go and sell these truffles, he has to make sure that they look okay. He cuts open the box, which is covered with U.S. customs stickers.

What is this moment like for you, Ian? Pure anxiety, honestly. That's because so many things can go wrong between the time the truffles come out of the ground in Italy and the time Ian gets them in Queens. They could get stolen. They could be left on an airport tarmac. The airline maybe doesn't refrigerate them properly. They could even have bugs. The truffles have already been on this amazing journey. I mean, two days ago, these were underground in a forest in Tuscany, and they were found using dogs, dogs that are trained to sniff them out. I'm just removing all the ice packs from the top of the box.

Oh, is that the smell? That is the smell. What do you think? Oh my God, that smell. It's not good. It's like burnt something. It's like burnt. To me, it's like mushrooms combined with dirty socks in a good way.

What is dirty socks in a good way mean? Ian takes out a truffle. He holds it up to the light, smells it. It's kind of round and lumpy. It's sort of golden white. It almost looks like Yukon gold potatoes. This one is very nice. Ian looks really relieved because he's banking on these truffles for his business, Regalis Foods.

White truffles are only in season for about 12 weeks. And during that time, Ian makes most of his money for the year. Ian puts the truffles into a dented styrofoam cooler covered with packing tape, loads them into the trunk of his car, and we're off. All right. You guys ready? Do it. Okay. Ian needs to sell these $20,000 worth of truffles by 5 p.m. because that is when restaurants start gearing up for dinner. Yeah, and if he doesn't do it, he's in trouble. Because literally every second that passes, the truffles are losing value. Right, because truffles are mostly water.

And every moment that they are out of the ground, they are losing water. They're drying up. So it's like with every red light that we hit, a few pennies fall out of your pocket. Pretty much. I would say I lose about 3% a day. So if we do the math, I'm probably going to lose about $1,500 today. Just an evaporation loss. Just in the trunk? In the trunk. Do you think about that when you're sitting in traffic? I mean, I've learned not to. A few red lights later, we arrive

at Peoria in the West Village. It's noon. Are we backing down a one-way street? Yeah. I'm gonna back down the street. This guy is giving us the stink eye. So you're parking like in a red zone right now? I'm in a red zone. How much money do you budget per year in parking tickets? It's probably $10,000. $10,000 a year in parking tickets? Really? Yeah. You just park wherever. You just gotta park. The truffles will not wait. They can't wait.

Ian jumps out of the car, grabs the styrofoam cooler, balances his scale on top of it, and we rush into the restaurant. All right, let's make it quick. Hello, truffle man. Peoria is this really romantic, kind of airy restaurant, and the chef, Christopher Cipollone, meets us in the kitchen. Ian's unwrapping the cooler right now. What are you thinking at this moment, chef, as he unwraps? What's going through your mind?

I'm pretty excited. I'm always excited by what Ian brings me. Chef Chris starts poking through the cooler, looking through the truffles. These are actually gorgeous. And we've been doing quite well with the truffles, my friend. We're doing a simple

handmade ricotta straccianotti, and we just glaze it in butter and pasta water, and then just shave the truffles table side. How much is the dish? The dish is only $85. It's a steal.

Dan, this blew my mind. I mean, think about it. This is like pasta and butter, which is basically what you feed a child who has the stomach flu. I mean, it is some of the cheapest food you can get anywhere. And Chef Chris is charging $85 for a plate of buttered pasta. Well, buttered pasta with truffles on top. Yes. And there is some logic to it because the idea is you want something kind of simple so that all the focus is on the truffles.

You know, like you don't hang the Mona Lisa on a plaid wall. Right? You put it on a white wall with a big spotlight on it. And pasta with butter is the culinary equivalent of a white wall. And how many grams of truffles go into that? Five. Five grams is the weight of a nickel. That is how expensive truffles are. For that amount, Chef Chris is paying Ian about $25. And he's charging his diners about $85. That is a $60 markup. That's a powerful food right there. Yes, it is.

And Chef Chris says people are happy to pay this amount because truffles are special. You can't get them all the time. Most places don't have them. And they're just excited to have this experience. Do you have customers come in especially because they want truffles? Yes, definitely. Every year, people kind of love to see what we are doing with truffles this year and what kind of preparations we're doing.

Chef Chris buys just under a half pound of truffles, which is, I mean, just a few truffles, each one the size of a racquetball. We peeked over at the bill. That's a lot of money for truffles. $967. It'll be gone in a couple days. It's all good. Those few truffles will make about 40 plates of pasta. And the profit from those plates of pasta will be more than $2,000. So this whole time that we're talking to Chef Chris, Ian is texting madly on his phone,

glancing toward the door every few minutes, you know, tapping his toe on the floor. He hasn't even sold a pound of truffles yet, and we've got four and a half hours to go until the restaurants start dinner service. Ian packs up the truffles, and we're off. That's it. Wow. In and out.

You guys are efficient. Yeah, totally. See you guys soon. Bye. And? And no ticket. No ticket! The next deal went down literally on a street corner.

Ian pulls over, private chef of a wealthy family comes out, they pop the trunk, she goes through the truffles, and within a couple minutes, another sale. How'd it go? Good. Over $4,000 sold. $4,000 sold. $4,000? Yeah.

Between the private chef and Peoria, Ian has sold $5,000 worth of truffles. But he still has $15,000 more to sell. So we drive to the house of a hedge fund billionaire. Ian jumps out of the car, sells him a pound of truffles. Yeah, I guess, you know, he's got to put it in his coffee or something. You need that. Yes. By now, it is 1.30, and the dinner rush starts in three and a half hours.

Almost there. So how are we doing so far clockwise? We're a little behind. The whole time we're with Ian, he is just in the zone. I mean, he's texting, he's driving, he's making deals on the phone and in person. The guy just has so much focus. And he's only 24 years old, which I think, Stacey, reminded both of us that we are total failures. Also old.

Yes. But Ian's been doing this a long time. He came to New York when he was 18 years old. At the time, he bought a minivan and he would load it up every day with truffles and fresh mushrooms. And I would drive around to restaurants and beg chefs to come out to the van and take a look at what was inside my van. I was working 16-hour days, like hustling. I had so much stress. I was losing hair and I had this weird acne flare up and I was embarrassed to go outside.

Things are much better for Ian these days. In fact, this year, he is on track to make $6 million in sales. And the whole time we're driving around with him, I was just so struck by the contrast between those huge dollar figures that we keep seeing and hearing and just the ragtag nature of the operation itself. I mean, he's got these styrofoam coolers in the back of a rental car because the other car broke down. He's 24 years old, sort of unshaven and looking somewhat sleep deprived. And so he has like more in common, it seems, with a mid-level weed dealer than a luxury food titan. But that's what he is. I mean, he just signed a multi-million dollar deal with Williams-Sonoma

to sell truffle salt and truffle oil. But Ian told us he's never going to stop doing this fresh truffle hustle. It is the centerpiece of his business. It's how he makes most of his money. And it's how he keeps up his relationships with the best chefs in New York, relationships that he made when he started selling mushrooms out of his minivan. In fact, one of his first customers who used to buy things out of his minivan is where we are headed next.

That is Lure Fish Bar. And the chef is a guy named Josh Capon. This is one chef that loves to bargain. So what's your strategy going in in a situation like this? Maybe start a little high, see what he says. We're double parked. We're going in. All right, fingers crossed, no tickets. The restaurant's packed. It's the middle of the lunch rush.

So we wait a little while for the chef to come out. Ian sets down his cooler. He's still texting, texting, texting. And then finally, the kitchen doors open and the chef comes out. Hey, Josh. How are you? My name is Josh Capon. We are here at the legendary Lore Fish Bar with my good buddy Ian. Ian's actually in my phone as Ian Truffle Boy. Chef Josh starts inspecting the truffles.

It's always a pleasure to see him and what exciting, beautiful, and in this case, gorgeous smelling white truffles from Piedmont? Tuscany. Tuscany, one of the truffles from Piedmont, Tuscanys. Tuscanys, one of the truest, beautiful pleasures of the world. I went there on my honeymoon. I stayed in a castle. It was stupendous. And just smelling these white truffles, I'm transported back to that castle with my wife where we drank champagne with fresh peaches off the trees

and made love in the forest together amongst the hogs. Is this for radio or TV? If it was for TV, I think that the screen just went dark. I think we just went NC-17. Totally. So Chef Josh picks out a few truffles and piles them on Ian's little kitchen scale. And then they both start punching numbers into their own calculators on their phones. I say we knock this number down to 1,200 even.

All right, we'll do it. $1,000 even. I can't say 1,000. Come on, 1,100. I can't. At the same time. Look at that. Look at that. Ladies and gentlemen, $14,100. I can't. At the same time. Look at that. Look at that.

Ladies and gentlemen, $14 just came off the bill. Amazing. Chef Josh buys five truffles for $1,200. Yeah, and they just, they fit in his two hands. Chef Josh tells us he plans to serve them on a lobster risotto later tonight and on this special cheeseburger that he makes at the burger place across the street. It is a $68 cheeseburger, which he says has gotten quite a reputation. You gotta just come have the white truffle burger at Burger and Barrel.

It'll literally blow your mind. We rush back to the car. Ian still has about $12,000 worth of truffles left to sell. And it's 2.30. Our next stop is Minetta Tavern. It's a well-known, pretty high-end place in the West Village. The chef is Dan Silverman. He's a tall, kind of reserved guy. He says he's been seeing a lot of truffle dealers around lately. Are there a lot of people who sell truffles? Oh my God.

Yeah, there are. This time of year, people just, yeah, people just wandering off the street with like checkered cloth bundles full of truffles. It's just like random people always, every year. Smuggling, yeah. Probably. I like to buy from the people that I know. And here's the thing.

There are Ian's all over New York City right now. You could be passing one on the street right now with a backpack full of 20 grand worth of truffles. And some of these people are from other companies, but a lot of them are just hustlers. They're walking from one restaurant to another with a backpack full of truffles that they smuggled from Europe. And you could see why they would do this. I mean, one truffle can cost a thousand dollars and you can fit a lot of truffles into a suitcase. When we get back in the car, Ian tells us, yeah, there are a lot of truffle smugglers in New York right now, and they've really hurt his business.

They cut out the middleman, they don't pay customs fees, and they've cut his profits in half. Ian says he used to make 20% profit on truffles. Now, more like 10%. Ritzy restaurants, like the two and three Michelin-starred restaurants, are the ones that love to negotiate because they're getting so many different truffle people in the door trying to sell them product that they have a choice of who they buy from. At this point, it's 3.30 and Ian's got to leave us. He's got 90 minutes left to unload like $10,000 worth of truffles. And let's face it, Stacey, we were slowing him down. So Ian drops us off in Soho. And at this point, we are both starving and we both smell like dirty socks.

In a good way, Stacey. In a good way. Take your word for it. Right. And I mean, we've been watching thousands of dollars change hands for these truffles, and I still have never tried one. I have no idea what the fuss is all about. That's right, Stacey. And because we're consummate journalists, we head to Burger and Barrel to try Chef Josh Capon's $68 truffle burger. This is the third week that we've been getting in white truffles, and in honor of that, we're doing our famous white truffle burger. I highly recommend it. I would like to order that.

Our burgers arrive, and they are beautiful. The truffles are sliced thin and fanned out over the top of the burger so you can see them. Five grams, apparently, worth of truffles. sliced thin and fanned out over the top of the burger so you can see them. Five grams, apparently, worth of truffles. We took our bites. Okay, this is it. This is the big moment. I'm going in. I don't know how to describe it. It's like shoes. It tastes like shoes, smoked shoes. I told you, dirty socks in a good way.

Yeah. See? It came back around. Yeah. Dirty socks in a good way. Right. It does taste like dirty socks in a good way. Yeah. See? It came back around. Yeah. Dirty socks in a good way. Right. It does taste like dirty socks in a good way. It's the best description.

I'm sorry I doubted you. I'm in. All right. I'm in. See, Stacey, what did I tell you? Dirty socks in a good way. Dirty socks in a good way. We actually called up some food scientists to figure out what this dirty sock thing was. Like, what is it about this flavor that captivates

people so much that changed Ian's life? And it turns out that that truffle smell and taste comes from this molecule called androstenone. And it is found in sweat and urine. Yeah. Farmers will spray female pigs with androstenone to get them in the mood, which is hot. And, you know, I think I get it. I mean, I know why humans are obsessed with truffles. It's because they kind of smell like us. We are eating humanity. The thing that we most want from the finest, fussiest restaurants in the world is sweat, sex, and urine. That is why we

love truffles so much. You'd think it'd be easier to replicate. And cheaper. Yeah, totally. But I do think there's also something about this high-low combination with the way the restaurants get the food. It's like one of their finest, most desired ingredients, and they're getting it in this sort of sketchy, back back alley kind of way. Right. People wandering in off the street with napkins full of truffles or styrofoam coolers. Speaking of which, we checked back in with Ian to see how the rest of his day had gone. Yeah, and he probably should have kept us around a little bit longer because we were his good luck charm. And after he left us, his car got towed.

With $5,000 worth of truffles in the trunk. Right. Which is like your car getting towed with $5,000 worth of cash in the trunk. Cash that is disintegrating. Right. But this is where all of Ian's calls and texting that he'd been doing all day paid off because he'd actually been taking orders from chefs all over the country for any leftover truffles he might have. So as soon as he got his car out of the impound lot, he sped to the FedEx office at JFK Airport. And in Ian's world, this is a buzzer beater because there in the parking lot, he packed up the truffles and got them sent out just before the final FedEx deadline. Which means that if you recently ate truffles in Chicago or L.A.

or San Francisco, it's quite possible that they were packed up in the trunk of Ian's car. So it's kind of hard for me to believe, but it has been five years since we last talked to Ian, and a lot has happened since then. So Ian no longer drives restaurant to restaurant with truffles in his trunk. Now he's got a fleet of vans that do that for him. His company, Regalis, they now have offices and warehouses in New York, Chicago, and Dallas. And his company is not just about truffles anymore. We have wasabi. We've got Japanese fish.

We have uni. We've got wagyu. We've got live king crabs, vanilla beans from Colombia, an array of rare ingredients. Regalus Foods had really just taken off. And 2019, Ian says, it was the best year Regalus had ever had. And then, of course, March of 2020, the pandemic hit. Everything changed. I think it was Sunday night, Sunday the 15th.

A lot of customers started canceling their orders. We had over a million dollars in perishable products that we were sitting on. And we had over a million and a half dollars in outstanding receivables. At that point, Ian says, Regus Foods pretty much only sold to restaurants, although Ian and his team had been working on a direct-to-consumer website. He says when the pandemic hit, they just rushed it. They had to find a way to get their products to, you know, just regular old people before everything went bad.

I just woke up the next morning and published our restaurant wholesale price list on Instagram. And I actually, I started offering caviar for 99 cents as a way of enticing new customers to shop with us. Dollar caviar is an amazing deal. Yeah, I mean, I just, I didn't want to see it go in the trash. Two weeks later, Regalis launched its direct-to-consumer website and did over $150,000 in sales in the first three days alone. But what was the biggest seller for individual customers? I would say definitely truffles and caviar and wagyu beef was a surprising one. And then there were the prices. So truffle inflation is real. And part of it is, of course,

supply chain issues. Getting truffles into the country, Ian says, is almost four times more expensive than it was when we last spoke to him. But the main factor in rising truffle prices, he says, is Mother Nature. Unseasonably warm weather has made for a very low-yield year. So just the truffles themselves are selling for $4,500 a pound. That's compared to around $2,000 per pound five years ago. Ian says 2020 was an incredibly difficult year. But he says 2021 has been a lot better, with the direct-to-consumer sales still going strong and also about half of the restaurants he sells to reopening. Ian says things have been pretty good. Plus, Ian and Regalus Foods partnered with Shake Shack to develop a special truffle burger for only $8.

And Ian says between all of those things, 2021 was his best year ever. Today's update was produced by the wonderful James Sneed. The original episode was produced by the also wonderful Elizabeth Kulas. Isaac Rodriguez is the engineer. Alex Goldmark is supervising editor. We also want to thank Helen Holliman from the website Munchies, who introduced us to Ian, and smell scientist Avery Gilbert. Also, Dan Pashman, you're not

just a friend of the show, you also host a podcast, The Sporkful, and I am normally the host of Planet Money's short daily podcast, The Indicator. If you don't already, I would highly recommend subscribing to both. I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. And I'm Dan Pashman. Thanks for listening.