Only 5/8 of an inch wide, it’ll store up to 40,000 images in its 4 GB internal memory. At ten shots per meal, that’s enough to cover you for ten years of dinners.

I don’t mind toting a full-sized camera and lenses around while I’m traveling, but pulling it out of a bag to shoot pictures of the food isn’t exactly discreet. So I’ve been looking for a little sliver of a camera, one that will be equally at home riding to a trattoria in the pocket of my black jeans, or slipped into an evening bag for an apres-opera soiree. I’m pinning my hopes on the svelte T700.

Doing double duty as a photo album, the T700 sports a 3.5-inch touch screen for dazzling display, and allows you to search and organize shots by event or date. And once you’ve uploaded the high-res shots to your computer, it will offer to keep low-res versions in memory, so you can use the camera’s display to share images in slideshow or scrapbook format, complete with music if you wish. You can even import photos taken by fellow revelers, incorporating them into your mix. For those who want to upload photos or videos to social networking sites, the T700 includes pre-programmed sites like YouTube, and a USB cable for ease of transfer.

I’ve tried to coax the ship date out of my Sony Style store in Boca, but they aren’t talking. Until then, I’m eagerly anticipating my first dinner date with this hot little number. But like securing a coveted reservation for a top table, we’re going to have to wait another month or so to get a taste of what promises to be the best little dinner camera yet.

That’s all I really wanted. Something to settle my stomach. Hugging the occasional guardrail, crawling along the exceedingly narrow roller-coasterlike roads that twist through the tiny towns dotting the shore of Lake Como had left me feeling lightheaded and somewhat queasy. But it’s Sunday, and essentially everything is shuttered: groceries, gelaterias, even gas stations.

As fate would have it, the torturous ride was worth the wait. My reward: the most memorable gnocchi I have ever wrapped my lips around. A sumptuous sauce of Camembert, studded with walnuts and enriched with truffle. That dish will haunt me for years to come. Eventually, I will succumb to its siren song, returning to Nuova Capannina for yet another taste of the plate that rescued me from the drive that almost put me over the edge.

The St. Regis Resort Aficionado Scotch Pairing Dinner

Passed Amuse served in the Wine Room:
Farm Cheeses and honeycomb
Fresh berries with lavender cream
Glenkinchie Distillers Edition 1991

North American Hackleback Caviar
Talisker 175th Anniversary

Dinner served at Cero Restaurant

Beginnings:
Taste of land and sea Oyster with marinated Watermelon
Talisker 30 Yr cask strength
Smoked trout and sour apple
Caol Ila 25 yr cask strength
Prosciutto-wrapped Stilton on crostini
Lagavulin 21 yr cask strength

Second:
Smoked Buffalo Carpaccio, Leaves of Frisee hearts and Mache lettuce, candied Pecan, pomegranate vinaigrette
Oban Distiller’s Edition 1992

Third:
Caramelized Veal loin, roasted artichokes white anchovy, lemon caper berry demi glaze
Clynelish 14 yr

Main:
Slow braised scotch scented beef short ribs, Melted beets and leek confit, Mustard cream
Cragganmore Distillers Edition 1992

Dessert:
Warm carrot cake with kumquat compote and creme fraiche ice cream drizzled with a Dalwhinnie Distiller’s Edition 1990 reduction
Dalwhinnie 29 Yr Cask Strength

Finale:
Johnnie Walker Blue Label King George V edition

At lunch, it was an unremarkable wisp of caviar atop the sour cream that adorned a starter of Norwegian smoked salmon. Nice. Classic. But totally expected, and nothing to get excited about.

But at dinner it was a decadently different story. Even without caviar service, the sight of men in kilts makes me go weak at the knees. So when I entered the bar at the St. Regis Resort and saw a kilted Scotsman, I knew it was going to be quite the evening. And indeed it was.

In the brief moment before a white-gloved waiter appeared bearing politically-correct North American Hackleback caviar, I found myself shimmying up to the Scotsman. Evan was his name and whisky was his game. Beckoning me to follow his lead, Evan extended his arm, allowing the waiter to deposit a dollop of inky-black eggs on the back of his hand at the base of the V formed by his thumb and index finger. I watched as he ate it from his skin, rolling the roe in his mouth, gently cradling them with his tongue.

According to caviar connoisseurs, eating caviar off your skin is unadulterated bliss.

I agree. You don’t really eat caviar as much as you caress it with your tongue, causing the eggs to literally pop, which creates an extraordinary, sensual mouth feel. With nothing between you and those jet-black jewels, you can use the tip of your tongue to burst the eggs against your palate, releasing the entirety of their essence in your mouth. Big, complicated, and changing from the instant they made contact, it was hard to say which was headier, the caviar itself or the Talisker 175th anniversary Single Malt that accompanied it. Both brought the taste of the sea to the fore, and sent me swooning for the nearest seat.

Then again, maybe it was the sight of a man in a kilt.

Absolutely. If the CIA has anything to do with it.

At next month’s auction benefit for the Vintners Hall of Fame Dinner in Napa, the high bidder will walk away with an Instant Gourmet Kitchen, comprised of 80 essential items of cookware, bakeware, cutlery and tools. Makeover and Make a Difference will assist the winning bidder, at no charge, in donating their old unwanted kitchen items to a deserving charity, creating a second wonderful donation as part of their winning bid.

Those who like it slow will adore the rondeau, suitable for sultry braises, while the digital instant read thermometer will quickly satisfy those in a hurry.

If you can’t bid, you can still click to get your own Instant Gourmet Kitchen. What a fabulous way to outfit the kitchen at a vacation home. $5000.

When I went home this weekend to celebrate my mom’s birthday, I wanted to present her with one.  Trouble is, her recipe is so fabulous, I was a bit hesitant to bring someone else’s to the table for fear that it might not measure up to the memories.  But when a friend tipped me off to Jean-Jacques Bakery, and I discovered they do a German Chocolate, I rolled the dice.  Good roll.  We literally fought over the extra dabs of icing.

The bakery’s on a fabulous strip of Richmond’s Cary Street, a stylish swathof one-off shops known as Carytown.  I picked up a reverse-painted Robert M. Weiss Shih Tzu coaster at Janet Brown, oogled a Rebecca Minkoff bag at Que Bella, and lunched at Can Can Brasserie. — Hats off Skirts up to their Parsnip Soup with Apple Butter, Hazelnut, and Rosemary Oil.

Ironically, it takes less than a sliver of this magnificent mushroom to elevate a humble dish like risotto to celestial heights. Fresh white truffles will turn moldy within three weeks, so Ho must have thrown one heck of a party.

Truffle lovers will want to ferret out one of these fabulous presentation sets from Gump’s. Made in Italy, the wenge-wood serving tray is designed with a recess for mortal-sized truffles and includes a delicate brush to dust off sediment, as well as a horn-handled shaver and glass display dome.

White truffle season is fleeting, but Black Diamonds will be coming to market later this month. Scrambled eggs, anyone?

Mussels are like the nursery rhyme: “When they’re good, they’re very, very good, and when they’re bad, they’re horrid. Well tonight, I had the very, very good ones. Chef George Telles’ Prince Edward Island mussels with tomato, onion, garlic, and chourizo, in a white wine sauce. With plenty of crusty bread to mop up every bit of that fabulous sauce.

The occasion: Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivee! Yes, another wine dinner, this one at GiGi’s in Boca Raton. Actually, the mussels were paired with a Macon-Villages from Mommessin, a producer that also does a Beaujolais Nouveau. And yes, we did have plenty of Beaujolais as well. But thankfully, we didn’t have the Nouveau with all five courses.

After two Beaujolais Nouveau wine events today, I’ve had enough to last me a while. But those mussels! Next time I have a craving for mussels, I’ll go back to GiGi’s. And hopefully they’ll serve them with pommes frites, so I can pretend I’m in France. Or at least Belgium.

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