If you’re one of those people who complains about the price of a soft-serve 99 these days, you might need to brace yourself.
Guinness World Records (GWR) has officially certified the world’s most expensive ice cream – and a single 130ml serving costs a chilling £5,469.
There are second-hand ice cream vans available on eBay for less than that. We checked.
If this dessert sounds like something you might be interested in – first of all, congratulations on being one of the less likeable characters in Succession.
And second, make sure you’ve also saved up enough for return flights to Japan. Ice cream brand Cellato, which created the treat, is not shipping it beyond their native country yet, and it’s unlikely to survive the trip across Eurasia in your Deliveroo cyclist’s thermal bag.
But what does it taste of? Silky dark chocolate? Some tropical forbidden fruit? A first kiss with the person you love?
Nope: cheese and fungus.
More specifically, the ice cream – named Byakuya – is flavoured with parmigiano reggiano and a rare white truffle from the town of Alba in Italy.
The truffle in question costs nearly £12,000 per kilogram, so you can be assured that there are wildly inflated prices at every stage of the manufacturing process.
A Cellato spokesperson told the record reference book: ‘It took us over 1.5 years to develop, with a lot of trials and errors to get the taste right.’
They added that ‘achieving a Guinness World Records title made the effort all worth it’, perhaps forgetting that it’s their product and they could put any price they fancied on it.
If you’re worried about spending that much money on something with inbuilt ephemerality, then do not fear.
Every serving of the dessert comes with a hand-crafted metal spoon made by Takeuchi craftsmen in Fushimi, Kyoto, employing the same techniques and materials used in the construction of temples.
We assume you at least get to keep the spoon.
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