The prosciutto and salami, the vegetables and fruit, the wine and bread; everything here is homemade - "right down to the water", says SandroTončić with a smile. And the truffles? "We look for them ourselves," emphasizes the landlord, leading the way to a kennel where several truffle dogs welcome visitors with their tails wagging.

Together with his wife Sandra and his sister Orieta, Tončić the eponymous Agroturizam in the village of Zrenj in the Croatian part of Istria, a few kilometers south of the Slovenian border. The setting is stunning: from the terrace, the view sweeps along the karst plateau deep into the landscape of the peninsula. A flock of sheep graze in the pasture in front of the house, and a few cows graze a little further on.

"Our luck is that Istria has four types of truffles, so we can serve them all year round," says Sandro's sister Orieta, who looks after the kitchen. The four varieties include three black and one white truffle; the latter, which is usually only found from October to the end of December, is known to be the most expensive and rarest. You also have to deal with it differently, the chef emphasizes.

"While black truffles are best heated to release their flavor, white truffles should only be shaved raw over hot dishes," she explains and serves a scrambled egg covered in shaved black truffles, which couldn't taste more intense. "The sliced ones are just decoration, the ones that add flavor are the ones I've scrambled in the egg," says the hostess.

Obviously, even many celebrity chefs do not know how to handle the different types of truffles correctly when they simply drape black summer truffles on dishes, as happens time and again, in an attempt to impress more visually than in terms of taste.

Simple pleasure

There is a good reason why truffles in Istria have retained a certain down-to-earthness, even simplicity, and are also available in larger quantities and much cheaper in the local gastronomy than, for example, around the Piedmontese town of Alba, which is also known as a truffle Mecca. While Alba had already begun to work on developing a proper truffle tourism industry in the 1950s, Istria was still part of socialist Yugoslavia - and the very concept of "truffle tourism" was hardly something that would have promoted the regime of a workers' and peasants' state.

And so, for decades, most of the Istrian mushrooms went to Piedmont, where they were sold by unabashed traders as "Alba truffles". But the fact that the term is purely a marketing tool is shown by the fact that Alba is a city. And therefore truffles do not occur there at all.

In the meantime, socialist Yugoslavia is long gone - and the white truffle has also been discovered as a culinary tourist attraction in Istria. And yet the interaction with her here remains far more informal than in Piedmont. While in and around Alba people like to bring a letter scale to the table to weigh the mushroom before grating it and then charge for every single missing gram, the vast majority of Istrian innkeepers and waiters simply start grating - and only charge a flat rate.

Taste of the peninsula

In general, many Istrians believe that both white and black truffles do not need much to create a special taste experience. Pasta, eggs, butter and cream are probably the ingredients that best do justice to their exciting taste. Ideally, they should be eaten in the region's simple konobas, where they can be ordered as an antipasto with egg dishes and/or as a primo, for example with the local pasta format fuži. And for the main course with meat or fish, where it comes into its own to a much lesser extent, it is better to do without it.

Unless you are a guest of one of the best creative chefs in the region. Like Jeffrey Vella, for example. Born in Malta, he has lived for many years in Istria and is head chef of the "Cap Aureo", a restaurant with fine cuisine in the "Grand Park Hotel" in Rovinj.

He combines the black truffle with brown butter, fried turbot and sarma, the traditional stuffed cabbage rolls. Meanwhile, he slices the white raw over a grilled lobster with roasted sweetbreads and a white bean velouté. Both dishes reflect the taste of the peninsula, combining the earthy flavors of the mushroom with the maritime flavors of the Adriatic.

But one thing above all is clear: whether it's a simple agriturismo or an upscale restaurant - in Istria, people know that black truffles should be cooked and white truffles should be sliced raw.