The big bite

A Dutch restaurant owner’s culinary ambitions have resulted in the world’s most expensive burger, priced at 6,000 dollars

Robbert Jan de Veen, owner of Dutch restaurant De Daltons, came up with the idea of The Golden Boy burger, while browsing the Internet. He came across the previous record for the world’s most expensive burger, held by an Oregon restaurant that made a $5,000 burger that weighed a whopping 352 kg, back in 2011. He found it cool, but decided he could make an even more expensive burger, and one that could actually be finished by one person. “If you have a record like that, you should make a burger that one person can eat. Because that’s the real most expensive burger in the world,” says de Veen.

“Restaurants were closed and there were no food competitions due to the pandemic. Though our food takeaway service was on, I was depressed,” the restaurateur said. “Therefore, I decided to create the world’s most expensive burger and donate the entire income to charity to do good for the society.” Getting the recipe for The Golden Boy right took a while and a lot of trial and error, but in the end, de Veen came up with a suitable combination that pushed the price of the world’s most expensive burger to $6,000.

The decadent burger features all sorts of expensive ingredients, from the Dom Perignon champagne-infused buns wrapped in gold leaf, to the Japanese Wagyu beef, Beluga caviar, Joselito Bellota 100 per cent Iberico Vintage Jamon, Cheddar with truffle from Wyke Farms, all smothered in a barbecue sauce made from Kopi Luwak coffee and Macallan Single Malt Whisky Rare Cask, and smoked saffron chive mayonnaise made from duck eggs. Finally, the burger is bathed in whisky-impregnated smoke for added flavour. “The ingredients complement each other very well and the flavours are intense,” The Golden Boy’s creator says. “Even though this burger is extremely costly, you should still use your hands because that is the only way to eat a burger. Since the bun is covered in gold leaf, your fingers will be golden by the time you finish.”

Horsing around

A Russian was given a prison sentence for tormenting his neighbours with horse’s neighing and stomping noises

Yuri Kondratyev, 47, is famous in his home city of Nizhny Novgorod, after making national headlines for torturing the neighbours in his apartment building for over two years. The unemployed man, who lives alone ever since his wife left him, started harassing his neighbours in 2018. Annoyed by the noises, one of their kids was making during the day, Yuri started exacting his revenge on the whole building at night. At first, he started playing loud rock music for hours, and then switched to recordings of horse neighing and stomping. After trying to reason with Kondratyev, his neighbours started filing complaints about him to police and other local authorities, and even tried to have him admitted to a mental hospital. At one point, the 47-year-old got a certificate from a psychiatrist about his impeccable mental health, made copies of it, stuffed them into the neighbours’ mail boxes and continued playing his horse noises at night.

14 of Da Vinci’s descendants still alive

Pic/Getty Images

An extensive new study published this month in the journal, Human Evolution had comprehensively retraced the late great Renaissance man’s family tree to discover that he still has 14 living relatives. Some of them even still live near his hometown of Vinci, Italy. The study authors traced da Vinci’s heritage back 690 years, carefully comparing the Y chromosome of those living to their ancient ancestors.  “They are aged between one and 85, they don’t live right in Vinci, but in neighbouring municipalities as far as Versilia.”

Microchip manicure turns nails into biz cards

A beauty salon in Dubai has been getting a lot of attention for its microchip manicure, which involves applying a small NFC chip onto the client’s fingernails and turning them into business cards. They can have all sorts of data installed onto the chip, from the user’s social media profiles and websites, to their contact details and phone number.

The Disney-like town nobody wants to live in

Burj Al Babas is an abandoned housing development in Turkey, which consists of hundreds of miniature Disney-like chateaus stretching out almost as far as the eye can see. It was supposed to be a bustling holiday retreat for the world’s super-rich, a neighbourhood of castle-inspired villas near the the village of Mudurnu, in northwestern Turkey. Instead, today Burj Al Babas is one of the world’s largest ghost towns.

It’s a perfect illusion

Tokyo-based artist Hikaru Cho, 27, specialises in body art using a combination of body paint and makeup. She is already one of the most highly regarded body painters in the world, and has worked with big brands like Samsung or Shiseido, and organisations like Amnesty International, among others. Pic Courtesy/@hikaru_cho Instagram

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