World's Most Expensive Burger

They’ve doled them out for furthest eyeball pop, stretchiest skin, heaviest car balanced on head and most naked rollercoaster riders, but New York City’s Serendipity 3 snagged the Guinness World Record for the world’s most expensive hamburger last week. 

Developed in honor of National Hamburger Month, the iconic restaurant’s “Le Burger Extravagant” cashes out at $295 US dollars and boasts an ingredient list that’s a mouthful. 

Where to begin?

There’s the Japanese Wagyu beef infused with 10-herb white truffle butter and seasoned with Salish Alderwood smoked Pacific sea salt. There’s the cheddar cheese, hand-molded by Somerset, England’s famous cheesemaker James Montgomery and cave-aged for 18 months.

While you’re chewing on that consider the shaved black truffles and the fried quail egg. The blini and creme fraiche topping the white truffle-buttered Campagna bun that houses the burger. The exclusive Paramount Caviar Kaluga caviar–”a beautiful golden caviar with a buttery, nutty taste and large pearls from the Huso Dauricus farm raised in Quzhou, China,” says PR Newswire–sparkling atop the blini and the creme fraiche. Then digest the diamond-encrusted, solid-gold “Fleur de Lis” toothpick designed by the globally-renowned jeweler Euphoria New York crowning the whole thing. 

If you think that’s hard to swallow, Le Burger Extravagant is not the first Guinness for pricey fare awarded to Serendipity 3. The restaurant racked one up for a $69 all-beef footlong hot dog (also employing white truffle butter and truffle oil) and in 2007, owner Stephen Bruce whipped up a $25,000 Frozen Haute Chocolate in hopes of the honor, complete with edible 23-karat gold and a diamond-encrusted solid gold spoon. 

Serendipity 3 is only in search of bragging rights for its efforts. All of the proceeds from Le Burger Extravagant will be donated to The Bowery Mission, which serves New York’s hungry and homeless. Thus far, Today Show co-hosts Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb have wrangled out their wallets for the glitzy American staple, says Huffington Post. 

“I just ate eighty dollars,” Kotb remarked after taking a bite. 

The two are not likely to be the last famous faces to try a bite; since its opening in 1954 Serendipity 3 has catered to a host of the country’s stars, including Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol, Grace Kelly and more recently the likes of Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Sarah Palin, and Bill Clinton. 

Both celebrities and average joes can sink their teeth into Le Burger Extravagant with a 48-hour notice. You many want to alert your bank account as well.