New York City became the official home to the most expensive burger in the world last week, with Seredipity 3’s “La Burger Extravagant,” a $295 monstrosity made with two types of truffles, topped by a fried quail egg and served on a gold-dusted bun. This is, of course, the way the world should work: Our city’s in the midst of a new Gilded Age, and we demand our cheeseburgers be literally gilded to match.
But why stop at burgers? New York’s always been a pizza town. Don’t we deserve the world’s most expensive slice too?
Currently, the Guinness World Record for the most expensive pizza is held by Gordon Ramsey’s Maze restaurant in London, which serves:
… a thin-crust, wood fire-baked pizza topped with onion puree, white truffle paste, fontina cheese, baby mozzarella, pancetta, cep mushrooms, freshly picked wild mizuna lettuce and garnished with fresh shavings of a rare Italian white truffle, itself worth £1,400 (then $2,500) per 1 kg (2 lb 3 oz). Depending upon the amount of truffles available each season, the pizza is regularly sold at £100 (then $178) each to customers…
This is outrageous. Are there no New York chefs out there with the stones to challenge Ramsey? Tom Colicchio can’t whip together a truffle-infused thin-crust pie topped with Kobe beef stomach? David Chang’s never had dreams of serving a barbecue slice topped with foie gras and a heaping mound of pork shoulder? Mario Battali couldn’t see the point of a deep-dish pizza filled with tiny flakes of gold?
Dream bigger, New York chefs. Our international reputation is counting on it.
