Lawndale Tribune
AND lAwNDAle News
The Weekly Newspaper of Lawndale
Herald Publications - El Segundo, Hawthorne, Lawndale & Inglewood Community Newspapers Since 1911 - (310) 322-1830 - Vol. 81, No. 8 - February 24, 2022
The Historically Black Colleges and
Universities Caravan Was a Huge Success
Hundreds of undecided seniors attended the caravan and so many were accepted on the spot. Numerous students received scholarships and the students who received the most acceptances at each campus won $300 on the spot. Congratulations on such an amazing event.
Photo courtesy Centinela Valley Union High School District.
Travel from front page
It might come as a surprise, considering how
they usually live, but female pigs have one of
the most acute senses of smell in the animal
kingdom. Add in the fact that the scent of
raw truffles is indistinguishable from the sex
phenome of boar saliva, and for centuries, these
females have proved remarkably enthusiastic at
sniffing out the underground fungi. The only
issue is that these same very smart pigs excel
at wolfing down the buried treasure before the
farmer can pry it away from them. So much so
that, in 1985, Italy banned pigs altogether in
favor of dogs—who don’t particularly care for
the taste, but can be trained from puppyhood
to follow its scent.
On that allegedly cold November evening
at Enoteca, we’d already thought about following
in Thomas Jefferson’s steps when
he took a rickety three-day carriage ride to
Tain-l’Hermitage, south of Lyon, to augment
his wine collection. Tain and Châteauneuf-du-
Pape bookend a hilly wine region in southeast
France that boasts some of the country’s best
“undiscovered” wines—up-and-coming AOCs
like Gigondas and Vacqueyras. So we decided
to stock up on obscure wines, chase down the
black truffles of the Vaucluse, and then head
to Marseille for Bouillabaisse.
As we mentioned, sometimes in traveling,
you just have to roll with the punches. And it
turned out that Enoteca had been celebrating the
start of the Italian truffle season—the French
season, where we were headed, wouldn’t open
for another couple of weeks. The bad news:
We’d miss the boisterous open-air markets
where the farmers convene to sell their harvests.
We’d also miss the latest and greatest
truffle specials in the local restaurants. The
good news: No one would mind us wandering
around the plantations themselves, sniffing and
photographing the pregnant, photogenic oaks.
And so we spent a week wine-shopping and
puttering around Richerenches, Carpentras, and
Grignon, the three scenic villages at the heart
of the French truffle industry. With the lavender
and fruit tree harvests just in, the air was pungent
with a constantly evolving aroma. The truffle
forests were unfenced, so the only limit on
our meanderings was the size of our tires and
the ruts on the dirt roads. Farmers—who would
probably shoo us out of the way in another
month—glanced up from the repairs they were
working on, but otherwise ignored the invasion.
In that sleepy calm before the harvesting
storm, the biggest challenge was to find an
open restaurant for an edible lunch. So we
were walking around Grignan, getting used to
the idea of kebabs at the local Turkish grill,
when we passed a rusty cast iron gate into a
Paris—Armed against an icy chill by the absinthes at Chez Janou.
disaster of wildly overgrown weeds. Through
the mess, we thought we spotted a glass
greenhouse with uniformed young women
walking back and forth. A push of the gate,
and we crawled through to find the back door
to a thoroughly elegant atrium restaurant with
exactly one two-top available.
At the next table, a bride-to-be and her mother
and aunts (we guessed) were being served an
endless variety of Nouvelle Cuisine tidbits.
When we discreetly enquired of the maître
d’, he explained that we were looking at an
eight-course tasting menu that the chef had
developed for brides who were planning their
receptions. Naturally, that was exactly what we
were looking for—more or less anyway—so
we spent the next three hours in the longest,
most elaborate, most delicious, and yes, most
expensive, lunch we’d ever eaten.
But here, in the heart of truffle country, out
of season and in the typically purist French
manner, not one iota of truffle appeared on our
plates. So we just had to roll with that punch
straight out of the restaurant and into a very
long and happy afternoon nap.
Next up: The Thing About Istanbul.
Ben & Glinda Shipley, published writers
and photographers, share their expertise and
experience of their many world travels. If you
have any questions or interest in a particular
subject, please email them at web@heraldpublications.
com. •
Richerenches—Truffles, lavender, and fruit trees in late autumn. Richerenches—Beware of the pig!
Carpentras—Tunnel of oaks, hazelnuts, and porcine love.