For restaurants, seasonality is everything. And while winter, spring, summer and autumn all bring their own respective bounties, a quick look at Instagram any time from June until August suggests one season conjures the most excitement among chefs: truffle season.

From the kick-off of the Australian harvests, it’s impossible to look at social media without seeing grated truffle rain over a dish like ash over Pompeii, or thin shavings of the good stuff enrobing a bowl of pasta, plate of fried rice or a not-so-humble hill of scrambled eggs on sourdough.

But with its premium price tag and luxury reputation, have Australian kitchens leaned too far into the hype – covering every conceivable dish in a blackout layer of shaved truffle – or is this revered fungus worthy of the expense and adoration?

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“I love truffle,” says Sam Young, the chef and restaurateur behind Sydney’s S’more, where lobster, wagyu, caviar and truffle flow like water. “It’s rare, and I love that you can’t get it every day.”

Shaving truffle at the table, Young says, is an important part of the truffle experience, as is generosity; a lesson he learned from mentor and former boss Dan Hong (Mr Wong).

“[Dan] taught me that if you don’t put enough a truffle on a dish, it’s actually a waste. If you’re stingy, you can’t smell or taste it, so you’re not getting any return on your investment.”

Anna Terry, owner/operator of The Truffle Farm in Tasmania, from under whose trees the first commercial Australian truffle was pulled, agrees.

“More often than not people under-do it because of the price point. Generally, we advise first timers to use around 10g per person per serve. You can get away with less, but if you want your pasta or mashed potatoes to really have that truffle taste, then that’s the guideline.”

While Sam Young personally adores the scent and flavour of truffles, the chef concedes that for many customers having it shaved over a dish tableside is as much about status as it is epicurean preferences.

“It’s like any luxury product. Is a Ferrari worth $1.5 million? Are Chanel handbags or Rolex watches worth what you pay for them? When something is rare, it makes it more desirable. That’s the appeal of truffle for a lot of people.”

At Porcine in Sydney’s Eastern suburbs, chef Nicholas Hill approaches truffle season with similar enthusiasm, utilising it in dishes like his duck egg and truffle honey custard tart, and incorporating it into the restaurant’s beloved pates and terrines. But while Hill admits to a general fondness for ‘elaborate tableside service’, making it rain truffle in front of customers has never been part of his repertoire.

“The fad of shaving truffles over everything – like chips or Singapore noodles – is a bit ‘ick’ for me. [It] kind-of defeats the purpose of eating truffles in the first place. A truffle is a luxury item and should be treated as one.”

According to the Australian Truffle Industry Association, the popularity of Australian truffles is booming. From that first Perigord truffle harvested in Tasmania in 1999 – a time when Terry says there was no market for the domestic product – to today’s annual yield of over 14,000kg (of which over 65% is still exported, making us the world’s largest truffle exporter), our appetite for these forest jewels seems limitless.

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“Australian truffles are very good,” Young says, “and they will only get better as the trees get older and the industry gets more mature.”

Truffle farmers like Anna Terry see the work of chefs like Young and Hill as an organic marketing tool for the Australian product, attributing part of the industry’s exponential growth to the enthusiasm chefs have for the ingredient. “I’m always so excited to see what chefs do with our truffles,” Terry says. “It gives people – me included – some great ideas about how to use them.”

Ultimately, whether you get as excited about the season as chefs on Instagram or consider them over-hyped, Australian truffles have become an indelible part of our country’s seasonal offering. And though the Microplanes and truffle slicers will be packed away again in September, there’s no doubt they’ll be back again next year, enveloping every imaginable dish in an aromatic blanket of indulgence.

What is a truffle?

Truffles are the fruiting body of a ascomycete fungus – a fungus that grows underground. The four main types of trees they grow beneath are French oak, holly oak, European hazelnut, and English Oak. They grow seasonally throughout winter.

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