From left, Enzo Lentini asks, “Will that be a small or a gargantuan?”; an aerial view.Photo: Daniel Maurer
The new contender for the city’s most audacious cocktail (the sort of thing Marie Antoinette and her harpies would drink) isn’t quite as pricey as the $1,500 Duvet Platinum Passion, nor does it contain 23-karat gold like the World Bar’s signature cocktail. Still, it makes us wonder whether this whole truffle craze may have gone a bit far. At Tini Ristorante, a white-tablecloth Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side, owner Enzo Lentini is shaving Piemonte white truffles into a martini served in a three-foot tall, 74-ounce glass (to put this in perspective, that’s the equivalent of four Texas-size drinks at Dallas BBQ). The rarefied buzz will run you $165.
More because we were worried about our breath than because we couldn’t hack the king size, we settled for the $95 version and watched as Enzo threw a dash of the highly pungent rice used for preserving the truffles into a martini glass and then added shots of Stoli peach and orange, Grand Marnier, and mango juice. After shaking the concoction, he used a 75-year-old mandolin shaver to top it off with about $65 worth of mushroom slivers (he buys the truffles at $2,050 per pound). It tastes something like a creamsicle that’s been rubbed down with garlic. Pair the cocktail with some Malosol black caviar for the ultimate in UES decadence.
Tini Ristorante, 1562 Second Ave., at 81st St.; 212-628-3131.
— Daniel Maurer
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The Five-Point Weekend Escape Plan: Foraging in Piemonte [NYM]
