Pricey Prize Shows Puck's a Real Fungi

Wolfgang Puck is just back from Italy with an 827-gram white truffle (that weighs in at about 1.82 pounds), for which he paid a record $19,000 at the annual truffle festival in the town of Alba. The truffle is about the size of a small cantaloupe, but it's knobbly, like a petrified brain. "If I had a brain that large, I would never have bought the truffle," laughs Puck. "But every couple of years I have to have a folly--a little craziness, and this is for a good cause."

Nineteen truffles were auctioned on Sunday to benefit the Windows of Hope Family Relief Fund, which provides aid to the families of victims of the World Trade Center attacks who worked in the food service industry. The auction raised $50,000.

Bidders in Piedmont at the castle of Grinzane Cavour outside Alba were hooked up by live satellite feed with truffle enthusiasts in New York, London and Munich.

But Puck flew in to Italy, while fellow restaurateur Piero Selvaggio of Valentino in Santa Monica took the red-eye to New York to take part in the bidding at San Domenico restaurant at a lunch hosted by owner Tony May, who lost two restaurants in the World Trade Center.

Among the 65 participants were chefs Daniel Boulud, Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Francesco Antonucci, along with Ivana Trump, anchorwoman Diane Sawyer and Gourmet Editor in Chief Ruth Reichl.

Worldwide demand for \o7 tuber magnatum Pico\f7 , the highly perfumed white truffle from the Piedmont region, sent prices spiking as high as $2,000 a pound. And that's just this year.

The new tradition is to hold a truffle auction for charity. For this third annual Asta Mondiale del Tartufo Bianco d'Alba, the bidding started with the smallest truffle, at 197 grams, and then slowly went up to the biggest, at 827 grams.

From New York, Piero Selvaggio zeroed in on two spectacular truffles, one weighing in at almost a pound. In all, he paid about $9,000. "I was so excited at this point, I was almost feverish. Strangely, I hadn't seen Wolf bidding yet from Italy."

But when the last, biggest truffle came up for bidding, Puck woke up. For a while, bidding was furious, and the price quickly soared. Someone representing the Jolly Hotel in New York was very active.

And there was a dog named Gunther IV, heir to the multimillion dollar fortune of a German woman and represented by a beautiful blond seated across from Puck at the castle in Grinzane Cavour.