Vietnam restaurant under-cuts price of Salt Bae’s gold-encrusted steak

A Vietnamese hotel is offering a gold-leaf covered steak for the more palatable sum of £34 compared with Salt Bae’s eyewatering £1,450 price tag.

A Vietnamese hotel is capitalising on the publicity generated by the shockingly-priced gold steak at Salt Bae’s London restaurant Gokse by offering its own, heavily-discounted version.

The celebrity chef’s delicacy, which has the option of coming coated in luminescent gold leaf, summons a price tag of £1,450 and has been sampled by everyone from footballers and reality TV stars to government ministers. It caused a stir last month when a member of the Communist Party in Vietnam was filmed indulging in the glinting Tomahawk during a time when high-ranking officials are supposedly cracking down on corruption.

Now, the five-star Dolce Hanoi Golden Lake Hotel in the city centre, which underwent refurbishment last year, has renamed its eatery The Golden Beef Restaurant, and features as the prized item on its menu a gold-encrusted “Tomahawk Wagyu” steak, costing around £34 a person. The main course matches the newly furnished hotel interiors, which boasts gold-plated baths and toilets as part of its opulent rebranding.

According to a report by Reuters, the hotel has already served its blinged-up steak to more than 1,000 guests.

“I thought why don’t I open a restaurant that sells golden steaks that are affordable,” said Nguyen Huu Duong, chairman of Hoa Binh Group, which owns the hotel.

The restaurant imports its gold leaves and uses around 10-15 on each Tomahawk steak, which serves four people.

Duong, a Vietnam War veteran and former cyclo taxi driver who made his fortune in construction and property, made no comment on the fact that with the average monthly income in Vietnam the equivalent of around £138 per month, the hotel’s gold steak amounts to around one fifth of most local residents’ monthly salary.

The sky-high prices at social media sensation Salt Bae’s restaurant have raised many eyebrows, with one customer flabbergasted to receive an astronomical bill of £37,000 at the end of the night.