Gold, you might be thinking, a little too rich for my taste. Not so; the stuff has no flavour. Fortunately, the trifling inconvenience of this detail has never held chefs back. Remember Mr Z and his gold-wrapped sandwiches? No, no-one does. But where he failed, Salt Bae triumphed. Bae opened his Knightsbridge steakhouse Nusr-Et in 2021 with tomahawk tarted up with a gold-foil wrap — sort of beef in a body-con — which came in at £1,450. Bills within touching distance of £40,000 soon did the rounds and a profit of £7m was recorded within four months. London, a city of fools and their money.
Or perhaps not. There are indications our sense of cynicism remains: by summer of last year, the tomahawks had been taken off the menu (supply issues were blamed, but perhaps the, er, shine simply wore off). And now the price cuts are going further: last month, Bae introduced a three-course, £39 lunch menu. Now, maybe this is the cynicism talking, but when a restaurant lays on a (relative) bargain offering available seven days-a-week, I begin to wonder if they’re not exactly having to take a pronged fork to the hordes of hungry mouths demanding the à la carte.
