Roaches in the World's Most Expensive Dessert

Can you spare a tear for the ultra-rich? One week after achieving the Guinness World Record for the world's most expensive dessert -- a $25,000 "Frozen Haute Chocolate" containing five grams of edible 23-karat gold -- the New York restaurant Serendipity 3 was shut down by the health department. It turns out that in addition to truffle shavings and other Haute Chocolate ingredients, the restaurant's kitchen contained "a live mouse, mouse droppings in multiple areas of the restaurant, fruit flies, house flies, and more than 100 live cockroaches," according to the inspectors.

The Haute Chocolate story is already exciting the usual populist outrage drizzled with references to Marie Antoinette. In the Detroit News, Brian O'Connor notes that for the price of two dozen of these confections all the food banks in his city would be able to meet the Thanksgiving demand instead of facing the holiday with empty shelves. He recommends guillotining the Haute Chocolate eaters, "Then we could treat the needy to a helping of my favorite dessert: ladyfingers."

But there could be all kinds of reasons for needing a $25,000 Haute Chocolate. What about the chocolate addict who freely chooses to blow his or her life savings on a single dessert? And we mustn't rule out those who suffer from a rare gold deficiency disorder and have already consumed their fillings and wedding rings. All of these worthy people now face a shuttered Serendipity when they go for their fix.

No, this isn't just another story about gluttony. It's a story about the inevitability of cockroaches in a world divided between rich and poor and served by a public sector in a state of bad decay. In this situation, even the rich get ripped off, and should live in fear that those truffle shavings are actually maggots in cross-section. As Robert Frank, the author of Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich, observed of the cockroach finding: "It goes to show that in today's mass luxury world, just because something is expensive doesn't mean something's good or high-quality."

I discovered this when a recent move put me within striking distance of two high-end food markets, Whole Foods and Balducci's. Ah, was my thought, no more cooking! For dinners at least, I would eat nothing but their tasty deli offerings. How disillusioning then to discover that the items that look so delightful behind the counter are little better than the take-out at Safeway. Balducci's fresh mozzarella-topped lamb burgers require a steak knife; their shrimp-and-caper concoction, at $26 a pound, seems to involve a preparatory stage of fossilization. You can do slightly better at Whole Foods, but only if you avoid anything with a sauce, which is likely to be a super-saturated solution of sodium chloride.

Yes, over-salting and over-cooking have a preservative effect, perhaps allowing the same items to be displayed for days at a time. But there could be something else behind the consistently bad prepared food at these upscale sources: Many, if not all, of the people doing the cooking behind the scenes are making foods they are unlikely ever to confront in real life. Ask a Salvadoran immigrant to whip up chicken masala and he or she will no doubt follow directions, but in complete ignorance of the desired taste. One of the women working at the Balducci's I have patronized has only one visible tooth in her mouth, which in addition to speaking ill of the store's dental benefits, means she can never have bitten into one of the lamb burgers she sells.

And what about the kitchen workers at Serendipity 3? Like most underpaid New Yorkers, they probably went home to vermin-infested apartments, and thought nothing of a cockroach or two.

What this means is that even the very rich cannot escape into their own little bubble of purity and excellence, of "haute" this and "haute" that. Ride around in a limo and you still have to sit in traffic created by ordinary people who can't afford to live near where they work. Fly in a private jet and you're still dependent on archaic, underfinanced, systems of air traffic control. Travel first class on the Acela train and you still have to stare out at the rotting environs of Philadelphia and Newark. Oh, and you lobbied against higher taxes and regulations on business? Then think twice before you sink your teeth into that chocolate and gold dessert. The vermin are always with you.

Comments

[Counterglow]

Reminds me of a story from a few years ago when staff at a Florida (I think) prison found out the hard way that there are better ways to save money than forcing inmates to cook for them.

For your own peace of mind, don't try to imagine what was discovered in the food after some guards fell ill.

[professor]

Conventional Wisdom is wrong. Roaches without people go extinct in temperate climates.

[BarryChamplain]

This essay brings to mind the incredible 1986 film "Brazil" by Terry Gilliam. In one of cinema's many future worlds, affluent people in gowns and tuxedos attend swanky events, while behind them, revolutionary terrorists explode bombs, limbs go flying, and bloody bodies are carted out by ambulances.

The Ruling Class, however, keeps smiling and tittering and making small talk, through it all. The loud, fiery explosions don't even cause them to blink. Life certainly is different for the very rich, in this setting, because even the stuff that kills others in their very presence is of no concern whateosever to them.

A word to the trolls who insist on yanking-out the old "wealthy Democrats" canard: have you asked yourself why your knee-jerk reaction is to defend the socially-irresponsible wealthy class? I mean... YOU'LL never belong to it! Why are these people, your "betters" if you will, so in need of YOUR protection? If you were stuck in a strange city without cab fare, and you accosted one of them, coming out of a fancy restaurant... do you think they'd help the likes of YOU?

(Now maybe if it were AL GORE or JOHN & TERESA KERRY, you'd have better luck, appealing to their "liberalism" :-)

[nikto]

Pssst.

Rich people taste delicious.
Pass it on.

There's the solution--Eat the rich.

Get out your knife and fork...

[Maplebird]

Way to go, Ms. Ehrenreich! All of us coexist with the higher and lower forms of life, and anyone who thinks it is possible to escape vermin or pestilence by spending more money is out of touch with reality.
What I wish is that the ultra-rich would get a clue and share the wealth with those who really need it. Living with roaches (and living with oneself) becomes inordinately easier when happiness replaces the illusion of being somehow better than 99.9% of the rest of the planet.

[Aunt Shecky]

Well, Barbara, I guess the owners of that fancy eatery never thought of using some of the profits by investing in the services of a good exterminating company. I keep reading over and over again how that once we humans become extinct, the cockroaches will be the dominant life form on this pretty blue planet.
So much for Gregor Samson.
But it's not just the where-the-elite-meet-to-eat that's the problem. It's our vaunted American Middle Class, who scarcely remember the starving folks the third world, but who do admit to feeling "guilty" if they indulge in a dessert. Hence, obesity has reached epidemic proportions (no pun intended.) And it was the
middle class who totally embraced the concept of "recreational eating." If that's not real decadence, I don't know what is.

[Emmagoldmanbabe]

Thank you, Barbara. You are always brave enough to be the one to yell that the Emperor has no clothes! I love your work.

[LittleBrother]

What Barbara fails to mention is that the mouse, fruit flies, house flies, and more than 100 live cockroaches were the finest imported critters that money can buy. Each one has a pedigree certificate-- and that mouse was none other than Topo Gigio VII!

[Hattie]

Yes, I have been astonished at high end consumerism these days and how the point is not what the quality is but how much it costs.

[Balzac]

This is soooo funny!

I hope everyone that dropped $25,000 on that 'haute' chocolate gets to read this.

I really hope there were mouse droppings and cockroach eggs in their 'haute' chocolate.

[bobdevo]

"I believe in capitalism" - Insanityfollows

An apt screen-name. The problem with yer capitalism is that it depends upon constant growth, increasing consumption and increasing productivity to make its "profit." And as 2.4 billion Chinese and Indians enter the consumer ranks . . . where in the world will the resources come from to give everyone a Hummer, a vacation home in Costa Rica and a Ski-doo??

When viewed from space, human civilization most closely resembes bacteria colonies in a Petri dish. Like a Petri dish, the Earth is a closed system. Like bacteria colonies in a Petri dish, the final act is the "bacteria" dying in their own toxic wastes.

As Stephen Hawling has noted (and I tend to pay attention to the sumbitch): Mankind will need to venture far beyond planet Earth to ensure the long-term survival of our species.

[GoreSavingPlanetForJesus]

I agree that it is comforting to know that the world's extremely rich such as...

...John & Theresa Kerry ($663 million)

...Al Gore ($100 million)

...the Kennedy's ($ billionaires) and

...the Hollywood elites($20 million for 6 weeks of filming)

...still have to live in our middle-class world sometimes, whether they like it or not.

[givemycountryback]

Let them eat gold plated cock roaches and mice, thats what they deserve. Anybody that pays those prices is insane and a snob and probably a crook. This country is all about the haves and the have nots. Most of the haves inherited their wealth or got it from the backs of working people through crooked dealings. Most have never worked a day in their lives.And no, they do not want to mingle with the masses, it might ruin their thousand dollar manicures. Disgusting.

[Soulsurfer]

Great post, too bad none of the people mentioned will read or understand it. Money isn't the only way these people insulate themselves.

[joja]

Reminds me of Poe's "Masque of the Red Death" where the super-rich try to lock out the diseased poor from getting into their fortified castle, and dying anyway.

If you ignore a problem, it usually comes back to bite you in the ass. This is just the tip of the iceberg to come.