I’ve done a similar thing just to jazz up a special occasion desert but a chef friend at the time encouraged me to do a taste test… Surprisingly the gold had no bitter metallic qualities that you would expect and added a very good sour taste. I would thoroughly recommend actually tasting the gold leaf if you get the chance again.
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Is that green tea ice cream? I got a couple (much simpler) cones on a hot day bike touring Kyoto. The ice cream brought almost as much peace as the Tenryu Temple down the street.
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It is! And the pink bits are crushed dried strawberries. Absolutely DECADENT. This one came from the snack bar at Nijo Castle.
(Also re: Tenryu Temple, I made a few really effective binaural recordings at Tenryu and the Arashiyama Bamboo Forest that I regularly pop on when I need to travel virtually to that space. It’s one of my favorite spots in that part of Japan!)
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2 years ago, my cousins-in-law took my wife and I through Ise Grand Shrine, in the middle of August, on sprawling grounds without an inch of shade or the normally ubiquitous drink machines in sight. (Insert tasteless joke about Japanese people and death marches)
Nothing gave us more inner peace than the cafe right past the shrine gate when we were done. Extra large cream soda with ice cream
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I really wonder what you’re actually tasting there, since gold should be non reactive with the saliva in your mouth…
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Cripes. I didn’t know Damien Hirst was dropping cows into formaldehyde. I thought he only did sharks.
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You probably don’t want to see Mother and Child (Divided) then.
Or a Thousand Years (no formaldehyde)
My experience was more sour than the metallic bitterness that you would expect… I was thinking this would be a similar taste experience to the colorful flowers that decorate a plate and not expecting that gold could actually contribute as a flavor that contributes to a dish other than being a garnish.
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I’m wondering if you might have tasted the oil from the hands of the person who handled it, or something that the gold had touched, most metallic tastes are because the metal reacts in some way to the saliva, and gold is known for being inert in that sense.
However, since metallic gold is inert to all body chemistry, it has no taste, it provides no nutrition, and it leaves the body unaltered
I dunno, your experience seems to counter most every bit of information I can find?
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Ok, since everyone else here may be far more mature than I, I’ll ask the question:
Was there any noticeable gold at the other end of the digestive tract? I’ve always wondered if you eat gold leaf (that’s just going to pass through unaltered), just how much you’d have to eat to have glitter poop.
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gold leaf has a mass of 0.004-0.007 ounces per square foot. the surface area of a large tomahawk steak is less than 1 square foot but let’s be generous and say that steak had a surface area of 1 square foot with a double coating of the thickest gold leaf. the mass of the gold would be approximately 0.4 grams. compacted by the body into a typical fecal mass it would be very difficult to detect without breaking up the feces and inspecting with a hand lens of some type.
it would likely require 10-20 times the amount of gold leaf on the steak in order to have a glittering turd. perhaps more.
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So what you’re saying is that I have to eat 20 tomahawk steaks to achieve my goal…
I don’t think I have the gastrointestinal capacity or bougie budget to live this dream. 
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you could just buy a 250 page book of gold leaf and consume that. i know gold is not easily absorbed and all but i doubt it would provide any health benefits.
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I’ve read that gold leaf can cause small lacerations to the intestines. I would not recommend it.
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my understatement is hyperbolic:
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You could always just apply the gold leaf after defecation. Sometimes you just gotta fake it until you make it.
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You may have just inspired an art project for the lady in the neighborhood that lets her dog poop on other people’s property:
“Dog Excrement covered with gold leaf” - 2021: Karen McDogShits (with picture of her of course) A commentary on the superficial nature of appearance. Thought to be a metaphor for the artist herself."
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“Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish been caught, and the last stream poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money.” —Alanis Obomsawin
“Wanna bet?” —Rich Assholes
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Not that I noticed, no!
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