Vietnam hotel offers diners gold leaf-coated steaks at $45 a person

The dish became popular after a minister was filmed eating it at a London restaurant last month

A customer takes pictures of a gold leaf-coated steak at the Dolce By Wyndham Hanoi Golden Lake hotel in Hanoi (Reuters)

A Vietnam restaurant is selling gold-leaf steaks seeking to tap into a wave of popularity and backlash surrounding the dish after a minister was spotted eating it at a restaurant in London.

The Dolce Hanoi Golden Lake Hotel in Hanoi tapped into this popularity and added the dish at one of its eateries, the Golden Beef Restaurant.

The restaurant charges only $45 (£34) a person for the gold-encrusted “Tomahawk Wagyu” steak that the minister ate in London.

“I thought why don’t I open a restaurant that sells golden steaks that are affordable,” Nguyen Huu Duong, the chairman of Hoa Binh Group which owns the hotel managed by US-based Wyndham Hotels and Resorts Inc, told Reuters.

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

“We have served more than 1,000 guests who came to try out the golden steak,” he said.

Mr Duong’s hotel had a makeover last year in which everything from bath tubs to toilets were gold-plated. The restaurant Golden Beef Restaurant was accordingly renamed as a part of this rebranding.

Vietnam’s minister of public security To Lam had stoked controversy last month when he was seen eating a slice of the gold-plated steak, worth £1,450, at the Nusr-Et restaurant, owned by Turkish chef Nusret Gökçe, popularly known as Salt Bae.

The restaurant, while popular, has been criticised for being outrageously expensive.

The Vietnam official faced backlash back home for eating the expensive steak just a day after visiting Karl Marx’s grave but the steak itself became hugely popular.

The video of the Vietnamese minister eating the steak also led to an uproar on social media with users accusing him of feasting with taxpayers’ money amid a state crackdown on corruption in the Southeast Asian nation.

The dish also became infamous after police in Vietnam summoned a noodle seller who recorded himself imitating Salt Bae, just days after the Vietnamese minister was filmed eating gold-encrusted steak in London.

Additional reporting by Reuters