written by Mike MacEacheran
updated 23.03.2020
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written by Mike MacEacheran
updated 23.03.2020
An Italian white truffle topped with edible silver, or a caviar-infused doughnut lathered in foie gras from a champion mother goose can only mean one thing: the so-extravagant-it’s-silly food concept. Forget the ludicrous cronut or the breakfast mutation known as the waffogato – a combination of waffle-shaped ice cream with maple syrup espresso. If you couldn’t give a hoot about hype, flavour or cost, here’s our rundown of the dinners you don’t really need but will be dying to try.
For starters, the restaurant has 27 chefs for only 12 diners, and it specialises in indulgent tomfoolery mixing gourmet illusion with Harry Potter logic. To date, they’ve created edible personalised entrance tickets, self-mixing test tube cocktails, white chocolate foie gras doughnuts and balloons filled with cake – all of it synced to a head-spinning, virtual backdrop of 360-degree projections and high-tech eye candy. None of it makes sense, until you consider the technicians and visual artists working behind the scenes.
They're not just any burgers though: the Octuple Bypass consists of eight half-pound beef patties, forty bacon rashers, 8 squares of glow-in-the-dark processed cheese, crisp onion rings, and a lonely, sliced tomato. Talk about meat sweats. For the full 19,900 calorie effect – enough to keep a baby elephant alive – it comes served in a lard-coated bun. If your eyes water just thinking about this bloaty, trans-fatty mess, we’d recommend seeing your GP straight away.
Enter the Studio Kitchen at K West Hotel & Spa which created this hard-to-believe one-off: a brioche bun dipped in white chocolate and dusted in raspberry sprinkles, then filled with a battered Creme Egg, topped with mascarpone cream and strawberry jelly. Trying to get their own artery-clogging revenge, the capital’s latest Scottish restaurant Mac and Wild serves-up filthy deep-fried pancakes stuffed to the heavens with chocolate ganache and salted caramel. Let’s be frank, eating this gloopy monstrosity in daylight is pretty shameful – but delicious.
© View Apart/Shutterstock
Indulgent gluttony doesn’t need to come with a hefty price tag. The Tebasaki Gyoza at Mu Raman in Long Island City cost only £12, but are labour-intensive bundles of deep-fried joy that take days to make. Famous across the eastern seaboard, the wings are first meticulously deboned, then re-upholstered with scoops of creamy foie gras, hunks of brioche and a five-day aged quince compote.
The batter isn’t any old chip shop junk either: it’s made from well-seasoned rice flour and meringue. An incredible mouthful of yum. Mmmmm.
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written by Mike MacEacheran
updated 23.03.2020
Mike MacEacheran is a travel journalist & guidebook author based in Edinburgh, Scotland. He has reported from 108 countries for National Geographic, Conde Nast Traveller, The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Observer, The Sunday Times, The Wall Street Journal, Mail on Sunday, The Independent, Evening Standard, The Sun, The Globe and Mail, Scotland on Sunday, The National and South China Morning Post. Follow him on Twitter @MikeMacEacheran
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