Spendy sweets 2007
The $1,000 Golden Opulence Sundae at Serendipity 3 in Manhattan features five scoops of Tahitian vanilla bean ice cream, delicately rolled in 23-karat edible gold leaf and drizzled with the world’s most expensive chocolate. Chilling on top in a tiny bowl is caviar that’s been leeched of salt and infused with passion fruit, orange and Armagnac liqeur.
Since its introduction three years ago to coincide with the restaurant’s golden anniversary, roughly 100 of the sundaes have been sold, said spokesman Joe Calderone, to everyone from bankers trying to impress their dates to Park Avenue princesses’ Sweet 16 birthday parties. “When people finish the sundae,” he said, “they’re left with tiny flecks of gold dust around their mouths.”
See our slideshow of The World’s Most Expensive Desserts.
It’s ironic that the words most used to describe dessert—rich, sinful, decadent—belie the relatively modest ingredients used to make them: flour, sugar, eggs and cream. Because of these otherwise ho-hum raw materials, dessert has traditionally lagged behind the price points of more traditionally swanky foodstuffs like truffles and steaks.
As a result, pastry chefs have relied on fantastic presentation and a chemist’s precision to give their creations luxury prices. When they start throwing in the world’s finest chocolate, a leprechaun’s pot of edible gold leaf, and other dazzling bits of gimmickry such as precious gems and crystal atomizers, a dessert can inflict far more damage to a wallet than to a waistline.
“Diners are bored,” said Mitchell Davis, spokesman for the James Beard Foundation. “They’re looking for new and absurd ways to tantalize themselves.” International pastry chefs have heeded the call by adding outlandish and unexpected ingredients to the meal’s dénouement, from caviar and gems to tomatoes and cream of green peas.
We spoke with top pastry chefs, heads of culinary associations and restaurateurs worldwide to assemble a list of the world’s most expensive desserts. Most of them don’t necessarily come from the most expensive restaurants, or even the most exclusive patisseries (though there are exceptions), but from pricey hotels where diners are generally more willing to pay for the overall luxury experience.
See our slideshow of The World’s Most Expensive Desserts.
The priciest dessert? The Fortress Aquamarine, at the luxury resort Fortress in Galle, Sri Lanka. Available at the hotel’s Wine3 restaurant, it looks more like an haute tableau than dessert, consisting of cassata in a “vase” made entirely of sugar. Next to it is an upright sliver of chocolate shaped to look like a fisherman, on which an 80-carat aquamarine—mined on native soil—is delicately balanced. Cost: $14,500.
The dessert, conceived just two months ago, is only available upon request. “The restaurant doesn’t have a drawer full of aquamarines in the kitchen,” said spokeswoman Suzanne Snart. So far there have been no takers.
While we found two of the four most expensive desserts in the United States, Americans as a whole are less tolerant of spending vast sums of money on confectionary masterpieces than Europeans. “It’s more frowned upon here,” said pastry chef William Goldfarb, proprietor of the popular dessert bar Room 4 Dessert in New York City, where innovative creations go for the relatively bargain-basement price of $14.
“I did a $100 crème brûlée for a restaurant and it didn’t sell well,” said Goldfarb. “Consumers think it’s obnoxious.” That thought is echoed by pastry chef Francois Payard, whose special $100 Valentine’s Day cake was met with a lackluster response at his eponymous patisserie in New York “Americans don’t associate luxury with food, but with handbags,” said Payard. “Europeans have a different perspective. A $140 cake in Paris isn’t shocking.”
What, then, to make of the $1,000 brownie from Brûlée Dessert at the Tropicana Resort and Casino in Atlantic City? Part of the restaurant’s three-course Crystal Menu, the Brownie Extraordinaire is made of dark chocolate, topped with Italian hazelnuts and served with ice cream—fairly typical stuff.
What makes the dessert so expensive is the accompanying St. Louis crystal atomizer, normally used for dispensing perfume, filled with a shot of rare 1996 Quinta do Noval Nacional port wine that is to be squirted into the mouth between bites. The atomizer, included in the price, is valued at $750. Of course, that still leaves you with a $250 brownie.
Expensive desserts tend to be divided into two camps, according to Davis: "Those that are priced in the $20 to $30 range--which is still considered expensive--tend to sell well. Anything over that tends to be unpopular." Hence, our list is comprised mostly of high-end novelty items (the $1,000 sundae) down to gift purchases like the $57 Viennese torte.
Read on to see pricey truffles, tortes, soufflés and more.