LA’s Beverly Hills Hotel is celebrating its 110th anniversary by selling a ‘special edition’ of its iconic McCarthy salad – priced at $1,912 (£1,547).
The salad, sold at its energizing lunch spot the Polo Lounge, is usually a more reasonable $44 (£36) – the price of the new bling-up version is a homage to 1912, the year the company was founded hotel.
It is named after Neil McCarthy, a local polo captain and regular guest at the Polo Lounge in the 1940s, who once requested a very specific set of salad ingredients – which eventually made it onto the menu.
It typically includes two types of lettuce, grilled chicken, beets, eggs, and avocado, with a dressing incorporating Dijon mustard, roasted garlic, and balsamic vinegar.
The chic £1,500 version is topped with lobster, caviar and gold flakes, will arrive via white-gloved waiters in a specially made bowl by French porcelain house Bernardaud, and will come with a bottle of champagne Dom Pérignon.
The special-edition bowl is inspired by the famous pink and green banana leaf wallpaper from the Beverly Hills Hotel, and guests can take it home after slipping away.
The hotel says a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the big spender’s salad will go to Los Angeles’ historic preservation charity, LA Conservancy.
In a crowded field, it might just go down in history as the world’s most expensive hotel salad – a record was set in 2003 at the Hempel Hotel in London, which sold a ‘Florette Sea and Earth salad of £635 created by chef Raymond Blanc to mark National Week of Florette Salad.
Blanc’s creation included beluga caviar, grated truffle, gold leaf potatoes, Cornish crab and lobster, and 30-year-old balsamic vinegar.
Last summer, Dutch restaurateur Robert Jan de Veen launched the world’s most expensive burger, which costs €5,000 (£4,300).
Offered at De Daltons Diner in Voorthuizen, and named “The Golden Boy”, the burger is presented on a tray of whiskey-infused smoke and loaded with premium ingredients, including wagyu beef, king crab, caviar and truffles.
