Gold Grilled Cheese and Beyond
When you think of grilled cheese, you usually think of a cheap slice of cheese sandwiched between two pieces of white bread. However, the Ritz-Carlton Hotel’s restaurant, deca, is featuring a new gold inspired grilled cheese that will put a hole in your wallet and probably question your whole idea of what a grilled cheese is. The “Zillion Dollar Grilled Cheese”, thankfully costing only $100, comes with 40-year-old Wisconsin aged cheddar cheese covered with flecks of 24-carat gold. Impressive.
Of course, the grilled cheese also has some other savory ingredients that help justify its cost, such as the hard to come by black Iberico ham. That’s not just any ham. The pigs are pasture-raised and fed acorns in the south of Spain before the meat is air-dried for almost 18 months. Other toppings include a sunny-side up duck egg, foie gras, and 100-year-old Balsamic vinegar. However, you better get your grilled cheese soon since it’s a limited edition menu item, out just in time for National Grilled Cheese month.
Other Golden Dishes
Even if you don’t get around to spending a $100 on a grilled cheese, there is still time to eat plenty of other foods with the Midas touch. In New York, one can buy a $666 burger, complete with Kobe beef wrapped in six layers of gold leaf. You don’t even have to sit down to eat this one either. It comes from the 666 Burger truck, which usually sells its normal burgers for $6.66. Of course, the burger also includes truffles, lobster and caviar, all splashed on top. However, like all dishes in this article, the real show stealer is naturally the gold.
We already have burgers and grilled cheese covered, so what’s missing? Obviously pizza. A pizzeria in Toronto named Magic Oven has also been selling a $100 pizza covered in gold leaf for several years. However, that has nothing on the most expensive pizza in the world from Margo’s Pizzeria in Malta. This gold covered pizza clocks in at $400 a pie and isn’t the type of thing you’ll find at your local Pizza Hut.
Gold is Everywhere?
In fact, gold in food might be more popular than you would think. Even Britain has been getting in on the act, adding gold to its famous Stilton cheese. You can also buy edible gold sprinkles at some specialty department stores to shake over cakes and other dishes.
Perhaps the most shocking example of a gold inspired delicacy was a $25,000 chocolate sundae that set a Guinness world record. Not only did it include 5 grams of gold and over 23 different kinds of cocoa, but was also decorated with diamonds.
It’s no mistake that most of these gold dishes also include some of the finest ingredients you can buy. Gold has historically been associated with luxury and quality. Unlike specialties like truffle oil or sturgeon caviar, gold doesn’t add much to a dish’s taste. However, that is not to say it doesn’t add a certain kind of flair. After all, nothing shows you have money to spend then buying gold and shortly eating it.
Perhaps we’ll even see a gold diet in the near future. It has zero calories and costs so much you won’t have any money leftover for real food. Or perhaps it’s better to just stick to wearing your jewelry and gold. After all, it’s probably much nicer to look at than to eat.