Expense It!

New levels of opulence — the $10,000 “Martini on the Rock”:

At $10,000, this cocktail is bound to leave you feeling more shaken than stirred.

The Martini on the Rock is the newest addition to the menu at the Algonquin Hotel. It comes with a single piece of ice – a diamond from the in-house jeweler.

“For now, it’s just an item on the menu – unless ‘she’ can convince ‘him,'” said Anthony Melchiorri, the hotel’s general manager.

Not a single glass has been sold, but hotel officials hope the glittering gimmick catches the eye of a would-be bride or groom. “This is a great lobby, where you can hang out and talk,” Melchiorri said. “Or where you can ask someone to marry you.”

The item is the latest, but not the first, nausea-inducing recent example of outrageously conspicuous consumption:

The drink is the city’s latest overpriced menu item, joining such notables as the $1,000 frittata at Norma’s in Le Parker Meridien hotel, the $71 hamburger at the Old Homestead and the $1,000 Golden Opulence Sundae at Serendipity 3. The martini’s actual price depends on the size and cut of the rock, but its liquid ingredients – a mix of Belvedere vodka and Martini & Rossi vermouth – remain as classic as ever.

“We were laughing,” said businessman Travis Hawton, 33, of Minneapolis, “about how someone will probably try to sneak one in on an expense account.”

That Golden Opulence Sundae was new to me, but apparently it’s listed in the Guinness Book of World Records. It was recently described in Page Six:

The foot-tall super sundae comes with five scoops of rich Tahitian vanilla ice cream, topped off with 23K edible gold leaf, rare chocolates made from cocoa beans found only on the Venezuelan coast, and an array of exotic fruits and caviar — not at all fishy, but eggs that are salt-free, sweetened and infused with passion fruit, orange and Armagnac.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Class War. Now.