Not Ready for Prime-Time Truffle

My friend called to ask me what she should do with the white truffle someone had sent her for Christmas. “I’m going out to dinner every night this week,” she said, “and I’m afraid it won’t keep.”

“Are you going to any Italian restaurants?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied, “tonight I’m going to that new place, Sostanza” (at 12100 Wilshire Boulevard, West L.A., (213) 207-4273).

“Why not take the truffle along and ask them to shave it over pasta or make a risotto of it?” I suggested. “Great idea,” she replied.

She called me the following day to report that the chef had refused to trifle with her truffle. “He said the kitchen was too busy,” she lamented. I told her to take it to the next restaurant she was going to, and meanwhile I went off to see what kind of Italian restaurant would turn down a truffle opportunity.

This one is a large, comfortable restaurant with a mural on one wall that seems to owe a great deal to the gorgeous mural Sandro Chia painted for Palio in New York. The menu looks a little like the one at Prego, with various salads as starters, pizzas of all sorts, pasta like tagliatelle alla Bolognese and main dishes including roast pork loin, grilled lamb chops, salmon with pesto.

It’s a pleasant restaurant, but it needs a little time to settle in. The manager showed up before the food did to tell us that he would take the dish we hadn’t liked off our bill. The waiter kept apologizing for not bringing dishes we hadn’t ordered. The busboy tried to serve us coffee when we were waiting for wine. This is a good addition to the neighborhood--but it’s easy to see why the kitchen had not been eager to tackle my friend’s truffle.