ASK Paul West, from River Cottage Australia, what a truffle smells like and he’ll answer: “A truffle”.

It is alone on his scratch-and-sniff scale, where delving into the science of taste and smell distracts from the pleasure of the versatility of this fungi to enhance and improve the simplest of foods and create taste sensations with so many.

Janet Jeffs, of Ginger Catering, knows a good truffle when she sniffs one and can create truffle magic with her recipes, but when she invited talented local chefs John Leverink, from The Boat House and Podfood; Clement Chauvin, of Les Bistronomes and Ben Willis, of Aubergine, to join her in the kitchen at the National Arboretum to create the Truffle Festival gala dinner the first “sniff” of it and the dinner was sold out.

The Truffle Queen of Canberra is Sherry McArdle-English, whose overnight success with the French black truffle has taken 10 years, but she’s created a market and made Canberra the truffle capital. She was the MC for the dinner with answers to every question about truffles.