NY Times finds North Carolina a truffling place

Hat tip to New York Times reporter and author Kim Severson for snatching from beneath the very noses of North Carolina’s MSM — not to mention its free-range bloggers and tweeters — this lively front page account of the spittin’ and litigatin’ match between rival truffle promoters Susan Rice Alexander of Southern Pines and Franklin Garland of Hillsborough.

Severson is the latest in a long line of Times reporters working out of Atlanta, including such stalwarts as future N&O editor Claude Sitton (who started the bureau in 1958), Roy Reed, B. Drummond Ayres Jr. and Peter Applebome.

Today’s “A tasty fungus…” followed Tuesday’s less appetizing “Edwards lies low….”

3 thoughts on “NY Times finds North Carolina a truffling place”

  1. Before giving the NYT too much credit, you should note this is an old story reported on long ago by staff at The Chapel Hill Herald. Here’s a bit of the story from our archives:

    Truffle trouble cooking
    Hillsborough company sues over cultivated trees
    BY BETH VELLIQUETTE
    Publication Date: January 3, 2010 Page: ch1 Section: CHH
    HILLSBOROUGH — In the gourmet world where a thin slice of a black truffle is said to taste so exquisite that people swoon when they eat them, there’s trouble cooking in the courthouse.

    Garland Gourmet Mushrooms & Truffles, owned by Franklin and Betty Garland of Hillsborough, filed a lawsuit against Black Diamond French Truffles Inc., and its owners Susan E. Rice and Corey Rice, claiming Black Diamond failed to pay a total of $400,000 for the 20,000 truffle-growing trees the company ordered from Garland; that they disclosed proprietary information about the truffle-growing trees that Franklin Garland developed; and that they didn’t pay Garland for all the help and expertise he gave them in setting up their business.

  2. So noted and thanks for the correction, Dan. My search for the “Susan Rice Alexander” cited in the Times didn’t turn up the “Susan E. Rice” of your 2010 story.

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