While highlighting some famous recipes that use gold as a signature ingredient, we started in New York and then moved on to the UK. For this post, the Empire State’s chefs strike back – but with a special twist! Of all the gilded foods we’ve covered, these two are both the cheapest and most expensive selections so far:
Frrozen Haute Chocolate: New York’s Serendipity 3 is famous for two things – its $1,000 Golden Opulence Sundae (featuring a hearty sprinkling of gold flakes) and its much less expensive (but still incredibly delicious) “Frrozen Hot Chocolate.” In a combination of the two comes the Frrozen Haute Chocolate.
Milk, ice cubes, and whipped cream are the only common ingredients in this dessert. The rich flavor comes from a blend of 28 exotic cocoas, 14 of which are among the most rare and expensive in the world. The drink is garnished with a La Madeline au Truffe – a French Perigord truffle coated in Valrhona dark chocolate (worth about $2,600 per pound, or $250 a piece) – then sprinkled with five grams of edible gold (worth about $250). The crystal goblet it’s served in is also lined with gold foil. Surprisingly, all of these ritzy ingredients only make up a fraction of the price. Most of the cost comes from the 18k gold bracelet with 1 carat worth diamonds that adorns the dessert and the golden spoon encrusted with white and chocolate-colored diamonds. Both are given as gifts to who ever orders the Frrozen Haute Chocolate. Because of the time it takes to import the ingredients and make the bracelet and spoon, this dessert must be ordered two weeks in advance.
Cost: $25,000
No, that’s not a typo. The Frrozen Haute Chocolate holds the Guinness world record for “Most Expensive Dessert.”
666 Burger: In addition to its desserts, Serendipity 3 also has the Le Burger Extravagant – a $250 burger served with fine ingredients and gold, diamond-encrusted toothpick. This wasn’t the first high-price burger to ever be cooked up, but it was the last straw for Franz Aliquo, co-owner of the “666 Burger” food truck that prowls around Brooklyn and downtown Manhattan. When restaurants use such exotic and strange ingredients in their burgers, he believes they ruin the taste and overall essence of the burger. To those ends, he whipped up the satirical “Douche Burger,” which uses nearly every fancy ingredient imaginable. The Kobe beef patty is stuffed with foie gras and covered with Gruyere cheese that’s melted using champagne steam. It’s then topped with lobster, caviar, truffles, and a BBQ sauce made with Kopi Luwak coffee beans. For those not in-the-know, Kopi Luwak comes from coffee beans that are eaten, digested, and defecated by a mongoose-looking, tree-dwelling mammal called the Asian Palm Civet. Due to the nature of the “production method” (which allegedly produces an aromatic, smooth blend with very little bitterness), a cup of Kopi Luwak can cost up to $80.
Once the burger is assembled, it is of course, wrapped in gold foil and presented. It’s still very expensive for a burger. But by far, it’s the cheapest recipe using gold that we’ve covered. According to Aliquo, despite all the decadent ingredients, it’s a nasty tasting burger – perfect for snobs!
Cost: $666 – of course.
