TOKYO — In the land of $7 apples and $6 boxes of granola, \o7 matsutake\f7 mushrooms are in a class of their own.
Japanese drop their usual tones of careful politeness and become positively rapturous in describing these unassuming brown fungi, their woodsy taste and piney smell.
The owner of one of the world's most exclusive restaurants, Kicho, where meals can run $800 a person and only an introduction from a previous customer can win a reservation, recently wrote: "In autumn we can almost not do our business without \o7 matsutake\f7 ."
But for the uninitiated, it is the price tag of the \o7 matsutake\f7 , or pine-tree mushrooms, that is so breathtaking: a few inches high and, in fact, rather mushroom-like in appearance, a single well-shaped \o7 matsutake\f7 can cost as much as $80; even an average one will run $40 per stem.
\o7 Matsutake\f7 are so pricey and so prized that \o7 matsutake\f7 fraud has now entered the Japanese lexicon. Recently it was discovered that some of these mushrooms were being sold with tiny lead slivers inserted in their stems to inflate their weight and thus their asking price.
Worth It to Japanese
For the Japanese, who adore all manner of mushrooms and use about half a dozen different varieties in their everyday food, the price is clearly worth it. "I love them," a Japanese newspaper editor said recently, as he dropped the subject at hand--stock market manipulation--to wax eloquent about \o7 matsutake\f7 .
A Japanese folk saying sums up the emotionalism toward \o7 matsutake\f7 : "The mountain where you picked \o7 matsutake\f7 cannot be forgotten."
With this saying in mind, a farming community troubled by a high rate of bachelorhood among its young men recently held a \o7 matsutake\f7 -picking party in an effort to entice women back to the farm.
According to mushroom connoisseurs, \o7 matsutake\f7 are expensive because their season is short--just a few weeks in late fall--and because they can grow only in the wild. Japan's wilderness has been disappearing steadily in the face of relentless urbanization, and the red pine trees around which \o7 matsutake\f7 flourish have also been diminishing.
Not Domesticated Yet
