LA’s Beverly Hills Hotel is marking its 110th anniversary by selling a ‘special edition’ of its iconic McCarthy Salad - with a price tag of $1,912 (£1,547).
The salad, sold at its power-lunch spot the Polo Lounge, usually costs a more reasonable $44 (£36) - the new blinged-up version’s price is a tribute to 1912, the year the hotel was founded.
It is named for Neil McCarthy, a local polo captain and regular guest of the Polo Lounge in the 1940s, who once requested a very specific set of salad ingredients - which were eventually enshrined into the menu.
It usually features two types of lettuce, grilled chicken, beetroot, eggs and avocado, with a dressing incorporating dijon mustard, roasted garlic and balsamic vinegar.
The swanky £1,500 version is pimped out with lobster, caviar and gold flakes, will arrive via white-gloved waiters in a bowl specially made by French porcelain house Bernardaud, and comes with a bottle of Dom Pérignon champagne thrown in.
The special edition bowl is inspired by the Beverly Hills Hotel’s famous pink-and-green banana-leaf wallpaper, and guests can take it home after they’ve tucked in.
The hotel says a portion of proceeds from sales of the big-spender’s salad will go to Los Angeles historic preservation charity LA Conservancy.
In a crowded field, it may well go down in history as the world’s most expensive hotel salad - a record was set in 2003 at London’s Hempel Hotel, which sold a £635 “Florette Sea and Earth salad” created by chef Raymond Blanc to mark Florette National Salad Week.
Blanc’s creation featured beluga caviar, grated truffle, potatoes with gold leaf, Cornish crab and lobster and 30-year-old balsamic vinegar.
Last summer, Dutch restaurateur Robert Jan de Veen debuted the world’s most expensive burger costing a whopping €5,000 (£4,300).
On offer at De Daltons Diner in Voorthuizen, and named ‘The Golden Boy’, the burger is presented on a platter of whiskey-infused smoke and loaded with premium ingredients, including wagyu beef, king crab, caviar and truffles.
