Pizza GoGo launches a £500 gold pizza
Apparently it arrives via red carpet delivery, with a butler.
Seeing this earlier today really irked me.
PR stunt or no PR stunt on their part, it’s moronic. This crazy gold food trend has to stop.
A couple of years ago, it was the glamburger from Honky Tonk in Chelsea. £1,100 for a burger. Yes, it included lobster, Kobe beef and black truffle, but how can anybody justify that sort of expenditure? Ironically, since then the restaurant has shut.
The Pizza Gogo irritates me even more. In the crazy world of pizza where the profit can be close to 900%, isn’t that ripping off the consumer enough already? I’d pay for the lobster, beluga caviar and the prawns as ingredients (I wonder how much is even on there), but what justifies the remaining approximate £450? I can assure you it isn’t the gold leaf… You can buy 25 lovely sheets on Amazon for just £4.85.
…That would probably decorate 25 pizzas.If you’re going to ask me to pay £500 for a pizza, it should at least come with gold earrings.
I’m not against spending money on good food or, obviously if you know me, good wine. However, it’s about spending money where there’s direct correlation to quality.
Gold Wine
For the about 2/3 of the price that £500 that Pizza Gogo is charging for its idiotic pizza, you could buy a whole bottle of the world’s finest dessert wine, Chateau d’Yquem (in this case the excellent 1990 vintage). It costs £387 via Gourmet Hunters, £493 via Uvinum and £500 via Fortnum & Mason.
Yes, it’s still a serious amount of money, but here you are paying for very rare liquid gold that has been lying down in perfect conditions for16 years.
Why is it special?
Chateau d’Yquem is known worldwide for being one of the finest wines. The vineyard is located in Bordeaux, on the highest hill in Sauternes, with the best growing conditions in the region. It’s planted with 80% Semillon and 20% Sauvignon Blanc.
How’s it made?
The grapes are attacked by something we call Noble Rot (aka “botrytis”) which is a natural fungus. In this case, Sauternes provides the fungus with the perfect conditions for this to happen: mist famously consistently settles in the morning which promotes the spread of the fungus. By midday, the sun will have dissipated the mist and dried the grapes, getting rid of unwanted rot. Botrytis is very rare and has to occur naturally. It’s not something we can control.
The fungus makes tiny holes in the grape skins, through which water evaporates, thus concentrating both the acid and the sugars in the grape.
With Yquem, only fully botrytized fruit is picked by the 150 highly skilled pickers and yields are so low that each vine produces only one glass of wine (!!!)
The wine is then fermented in new oak barrels and left to mature for 36 months.
The wine will last for well over fifty years.
So, if you’re going to make me part with £500, I can guarantee it won’t be on a £500 Piza Gogo.
At least the burger had truffle.