For $100, you can eat a doughnut covered in gold flake and icing made from Cristal Champagne
A Filipino restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn is selling a gold-coated champagne doughnut for $100.
Manila Social Club is known for its ube doughnuts, which are purple and cost $40 per dozen. Ube jam, which comes from mashing purple yams, is used in Filipino desserts.
The golden ube doughnut has icing made with Cristal champagne and it's filled with ube mousse and champagne jelly. The outside is flecked with 24-karat gold.
Some New Yorkers have apparently been willing to put down $1,200 for an order of a dozen. Gold is trading at $1,075 an ounce.
The restaurant has been promoting the donuts on Instagram, and customers have posted photos of their gold doughtnuts that they bought to celebrate the new year.
Here's the restaurant's owner and chef, Björn DelaCruz, working on one of them:
In an interview with First We Feast, DelaCruz explained how the gold doughnut came to be:
We have this doughnut program where we make doughnuts every Friday, and you can only order them online on Thursday. The reason why we do this is because we're not a doughnut shop. The Golden Cristal Ube Donut came along because there is a brewery in Bushwick called Braven Brewery, and we know the owners Marshall and Erik. We both started our businesses around the same time. We had a doughnut event where I unveiled a doughnut with icing made with Braven White IPA, dusted with gold. That was the beginning of the golden doughnut [idea].
The reason that gold leaf and Cristal were added was because I love all different champagnes. I wanted to add something [to the menu] for the new year to celebrate how long we have been going. I didn't know people would go and order a dozen [of these] at a time! But then again, it is New York, and there are people willing to put down a grand for a dozen doughnuts.
DelaCruz has also created a "black and gold" doughnut flavored with an IPA beer from Bushwick and dusted with 24-karat gold:
The New York Times reviewed Manila Social Club last week and called it "a bit of a ramble" but gave it a favorable review. The restaurant opened in April.
(h/t @joshbythesea)