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To: Win Smith who wrote (5)	11/12/2002 1:54:40 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 603

Gourmet Pays $35,000 for Truffle story.news.yahoo.com Tue Nov 12, 8:47 AM ET By Gina Keating LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The ultimate food fight -- an auction to own the rarest of ingredients -- has been won by a Los Angeles restaurateur who paid $35,000 for one truffle and now has to figure out how to get the odorous tuber past customs. It's not just any old tuber, but a white truffle from Alba in northern Italy, weighing just over one kg (2.2 pounds) -- a monstrous size for a delicacy that usually weighs at very most a tenth of that. "It was definitely worth the price we paid," said Donato Poto, director of the two-week-old Bastide restaurant in Los Angeles that won the bidding for the pungent specimen at the fourth annual charity truffle auction in an Italian castle on Sunday night. Thirty lots of aromatic Alba truffles went on sale at the castle of Grinzane Cavour, connected by video-link to restaurants in New York and Los Angeles, where gourmets placed their bids. The opening bid for the monster truffle was $8,000 but quickly surpassed $30,000 as master of ceremonies Robin Leach, of TV's "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" baited chefs on both U.S. coasts into opening their pocketbooks. Bastide owner Joe Pytka, a famed film and TV commercial director, raised his bid to $35,000 to beat New York chefs and Gunther IV, the 9-year-old dog that found the huge tuber. (Gunther's owner bid on the dog's behalf.) . . .