The Most Expensive Meat Pie In The Entire World

If you and a few of your buddies wanted to splurge on a meal, odds are the humble meat pie wouldn't come to mind. In 2005, however, eight regulars at the Fence Gate Inn in Lancashire, England, challenged the pub's owner, Kevin Berkins, to come up with a meal to celebrate "a good day at the office." Berkins and his chef, Spencer Burge, responded by making the Golden Bon Vivant, an outrageously expensive dish that has held the Guinness World Record for Most Expensive Meat Pie for the past 20 years. The pie cost £8,195 ($14,260 back in 2005), which would make it the equivalent of roughly $24,000 today when you account for inflation. To put that into perspective, you could use that money today to buy yourself and 45 friends a brand-new PlayStation 5 each, and you'd still have a few hundred dollars left over. That's a pretty pricey piece of pie, however you slice it.

Berkins acknowledged that he let the challenge get to him, saying it "started as a bit of silliness and quickly got out of control" (via The Telegraph). He's also on record saying that, unless someone made a genuine request, the dish would be a one-of in the inn's history. You can still drop by the brasserie and treat yourself to its steak, ale, and mushroom pie, which is much more moderately priced at £18.95 (about $25). If you still want to blow more than $20,000 on a single dish, you might want to check out the world's most expensive taco instead.

It might comfort you to know that the cost of the meat pie wasn't arbitrary; its ultra-premium ingredients justified how expensive it was. The list started off with $870 worth of wagyu beef filet flown in from Japan and included a gravy made with two bottles of 1982 Chateau Mouton Rothschild wine, which at the time was valued at $1,740 per bottle. The wine was of an extremely well-regarded vintage, which is saying something considering the chateau belongs to the prestigious first growth classification in Bordeaux.

The mushrooms used to make the filling were among the rarest in the world, further driving up the price. Included in the recipe were Chinese matsutake mushrooms, which added their uniquely spicy, cinnamon-like flavor to the dish at the cost of over $400 per pound in 2005; winter black truffles that can cost over $1,500 per pound; and woodsy, earthy, slightly floral French blue foot mushrooms valued at over $100 per pound.

The 12-inch pie was topped with edible gold leaf, which cost around $174 per sheet back then. It's unclear what the crust itself was made of, but there's a good chance that the mad lads at the Fence Gate Inn used the best pastry for steak pies available at the time. The decadent meal was served with two bottles of Louis Roederer Cristal Rosé champagne, adding about $800 to the final bill. At that price point, you can bet they did everything to avoid the most common mistakes people make with meat pies.