This rich dessert doesn’t sit well
By John Kelly
November 27. 2011
The economy’s in the toilet, people in Africa are starving, the Middle East is in flames, but don’t despair: Someone recently paid $1,000 for a chocolate sundae at a Georgetown restaurant.
The restaurant is called Serendipity3, and it sent out a news release announcing that on Nov. 19 it sold its first “Golden Opulence Sundae,” recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as “the most expensive Sundae priced at $1,000.”
I’m pretty sure there should be a comma in there somewhere, but never mind. What do you get for your thousand bucks? Tahitian vanilla bean ice cream infused with Madagascar vanilla that is covered in 23-karat edible gold leaf, drizzled in “the most expensive chocolate in the world” (Amedei Porcelana), with chunks of Chuao chocolate, topped with caviar and infused with fresh orange, passion fruit and Armagnac. Instead of jimmies you get truffles, gold-dipped French dragees (that’s Jordan almonds to you and me) and marzipan fruits.
Oh, and the whole shebang is served in a “Baccarat Harcourt Crystal goblet,” which you get to keep, just like one of those little plastic batting helmets at the ballpark.
I think this is the very definition of “conspicuous consumption.” The only way it could be any more conspicuous is if you ate it while sitting atop a lifeguard’s chair erected in the middle of Wisconsin and M.
I’d like to report that this Roman orgy of fin-de-siecle monstrousness was consumed by some Internet millionaire or a bored sheikh. But no. It was ordered for a boy’s 12th birthday, at a party with his parents and nine friends. His mother had celebrated her 12th at the restaurant’s flagship location in New York City.
The sundae was created in 2004 for Serendipity3’s 50th anniversary. Rodrigo Garcia, one of the partners behind the Georgetown location, open since May, said several a month are sold at the Las Vegas Serendipity3.
But that town is full of people looking to burn through their winnings. Am I the only one who finds something icky about spending $1,000 on a chocolate sundae for a 12-year-old?
“I don’t judge what people like to do with their money,” Rodrigo told me. “I figure people work hard for their money. If they want to spend it, that’s okay, right?”
I suppose. And yet I hope some day that kid experiences the pleasure that comes from sitting around a campfire with friends, roasting marshmallows on a stick, then squeezing them between graham crackers and a chunk of Hershey bar — a good old 99-cent Hershey bar.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/john-kelly-this-rich-dessert-doesnt-sit-well/2011/11/27/gIQAmNtj2N_story.html
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