Looks like slop to me. I mean, price is one thing, but I would expect the chef ('scuse me, artist to arrange it with some care.
1 Like
The other way around.
2 Likes
Whenever we’d go into San Francisco as kids – maybe 1-2x/year to the Exploratorium or whatnot – we’d always beg our parents to take us to Hippo Hamburgers on Van Ness. They always had these silly $999 hamburgers, like the Jimmy Carter which came with a side of golden peanuts and whatnot.
3 Likes
Goose fat sounds more exotic.
Ah, cool. Thanks!
5 Likes
Goose, duck, they’re all anatidae
4 Likes
Goose fat is actually really good when used properly in cooking. Not good enough to impart $198 in value to $2 worth of potatoes, but good.
3 Likes
It’s the perfect bag lunch for my next trip to space!
6 Likes
definitely. you’d think for that much money they would have plated it up with more skill than an average child. especially for a photographer
1 Like
Haphazardly slapping shit around is so in right now.
And, more importantly, it sounds more expensive.
It occurs to me that it would be funny to put together a dish like this, using all sorts of exotic, expensive-sounding ingredients that are actually dirt-cheap and charge an outrageous sum for it.
1 Like
I mean that’s pretty much exactly what they’re doing.
It’s just to really sell the “sounds expensive” part they’ve toss a in a few things that are above dirt cheap and garnish it with stuff that can be expensive. But don’t need to be.
It’s a little more reliable than cooking up stuff like Macro-tisanal Creme/Whey Emulsion:
2 Likes
In lieu of a toothpick dispenser, this place needs a complimentary after-dinner guillotine.
3 Likes
Well, they are using expensive ingredients (truffle, gold leaf), even if they’re chosen more for the appearance of luxury in order to justify a price that’s many, many times greater than what they’re paying for them.
It occurs to me that, ironically, they wouldn’t use really expensive ingredients because no one would recognize them, so it would be counter-productive.
2 Likes
That’s the thing I was on about above. The quantity of gold used isn’t expensive, even if gold technically is. You could probably gild that entire plate; fries, truffles and all for about $10.
And truffles aren’t automatically expensive by virtue of being truffles. It’s primarily French and Italian truffles that command massive prices. There are other species or varieties. Including pretty bland/crappy Chinese varieties that can be had surprisingly cheap. There are also canned and frozen truffles.
You’re not really gonna able to tell which you’re looking at by sight in every case. Plus there’s the volume again, that scattering of shavings isn’t necessarily an expensive amount of Truffle. I was given a truffle by a chef chef friend once, that was maybe a 1/4 ounce. It was enough to heavily flavor an entire roast chicken.
Also it only cost me a cigarette.
Pretty much the single most expensive thing you can cook with in terms of price per weight is saffron.
Good saffron, not the most expensive but good, can be a couple times the price of those desirable truffles per ounce. And about 4-8x the price of silver. In the past it’s butted up on the price of gold. Though not in a good decade or so.
This brand was recommended to me as a very high quality saffron at a pretty good price for that sort of thing. It’s $170/oz right now (ETA: it was $120/oz this time last year to my memory). Looks like black summer truffles are about $40/oz online right now. And I don’t think that’s really the best way to source them.
Thing is saffron doesn’t sound expensive. Because we encounter it so commonly. And it doesn’t really make a dish pricey, cause so little of it is needed. You could go blow a hundred or two hundred bucks on an ounce of good saffron. And it would take you years to use it all.
Really expensive foods tend to be just rarer or harder to produce versions of commonly encountered stuff. And unfamiliar stuff, might be a little pricier outside of it’s native context. But it tends not to be the sort of expensive we’re talking about. Like these unknown to Americans things.
5 Likes
And they’re not likely to serve it up with some Balkan donkey cheese because that doesn’t remotely sound fancy… but it could easily end up being the most expensive ingredient… Hell, use the right type of potato and they’d have to increase the price to break even.
Shoot, now I want some fries made of Bonnotte potatoes and served with melted pule cheese…
1 Like
Luxor
and Comte de Mazeray
are two champagne brands what put gold in their stuff. IIRC, a bottle costs about the same as those fries.
Can’t even see the orchid, FFS.
1 Like
I read your post and “heard” it in Professor Farnsworth’s voice.
1 Like
Pretty much ubiquitous at any humble chipper I would have thought. Thrice cooked (for large chips) isn’t uncommon either. But twice is, like, the recipe. It’s how you actually make chips if you don’t get them (part cooked) from the freezer.
ETA
Tallow FTW, not goose fat.
5 Likes
Great news!
3 Likes
Is that non vintage?
