Well, a restaurant designed for the Instagram generation needs Instagrammable food to match. Just look to Bacchanalia, where towering Damien Hirst sculptures and invaluable, antique Roman artworks draw in a crowd desperate for that special occasion photo opp. And in a place as opulent as this, it would be somewhat anti-climactic to serve a simple pavlova to finish.
Enter: Medusa. This medley of meringue, raspberry, coconut and pistachio – priced at £55 – is shaped like the gorgon’s face. One video of the dish posted on Bacchanalia’s Instagram has over 100,000 likes, and variations of this footage appear not infrequently on the account. (It’s clearly a winning formula for marketing.) Theo Zarikakis, executive head chef at Bacchanalia, tells me that they serve around 90 of these a week – even more in the run up to the festive period – and that some customers pop into the bar just for this dish.
‘Creating an iconic house dessert was something we knew we wanted to do from the get-go,’ he explains. ‘We chatted with Damien Hirst for his permission to create a version of his Medusa statue, and got a bespoke mold made up – the result totally exceeded our expectations.’ £55 to eat a miniature Damien Hirst? Well, how often in life does one get that opportunity? (And in any case, it’s certainly better value than the £4.9 million paid by a cryptocurrency entrepreneur to eat a modern artwork of a banana duct-taped to a wall.)
Preparation for this dish is extensive: a meringue base piped in a spiral, a homemade raspberry gel, then coconut and white chocolate namelaka, pistachio crème, cocoa-nib tuille, coconut chips and fresh raspberries. The plate is finished at the table, where a raspberry sauce is poured over the white dessert. ‘Guests love that moment,’ says Zarikakis. ‘And it brings a moment of joy – if they want to capture that on their phone and remember it, we encourage that.’
As for the marketing potential, it’s all important. ‘In this day and age, having something that causes a bit of a stir, a bit of a “Have you seen the new dish at…?” is the standard. It’s what we of course want – word of mouth and people snapping a quick picture of something is how we keep things exciting, our restaurant busy, and our guests intrigued to try us.’
And that’s exactly what I witness during dinner at Gaia. Every time that one of these desserts is brought out, there are sideways glances and whispers of intrigue. And some are completely unphased by the price: as I’m waiting for the delivery of my lobster pasta, I notice that the table of two behind me have ordered a portion each – £72, plus service charge – only to end up leaving about two-thirds. Other diners are less cavalier. I hear the table next to me discussing how good the yoghurt looks, only to exclaim in shock when they see the price. Still, they place the order; such is the allure.