We tried the absurd new 888RMB caviar pizza at Mercato

Photographs: Cat Nelson 

And just when you think Shanghai can't outdo itself on absurdly expensive things and luxury on steroids, along comes a pizza with a price tag of nearly 1,000RMB. Yes, that's right: One. Thousand. Ren. Min. Bi. Our eyes almost popped out of our skulls when we saw that, too. What could it possibly have on it, you ask? Heaps of caviar.

The caviar pizza – priced 888RMB plus 10 percent service, which means a total of 976.80RMB – is part of Mercato's new limited edition menu of 'Diamond Pizzas', an extension of the restaurant's insanely popular truffle pizza and which, at the moment, features foie gras and matsutake mushroom pizzas alongside the caviar and signature black truffle. The menu launched earlier this month, and we did our investigative best (for journalism!) and went to try them all.

First, a quick bit of background on Mercato and its pizzas. Tucked on the sixth floor of Three on the Bund, Mercato is Jean-Georges Vongerichten's casual, laid-back but classy Italian restaurant. While the kitchen turns out a whole menu of thoughtful appetisers and mains and a strong lineup of 12 different pizzas, statistically the chances are if you're going there, you'll be getting the dish that's become synonymous with Mercato: the black truffle pizza with three cheeses and a farm egg. It's far and away, the restaurant's best-seller. In the past month, the kitchen's dished out 1,077 truffle pizzas and, on average, it accounts for around 60 percent of all pizzas sold.

While it seems that little is ever going to dethrone the black truffle pizza (it is damn good, by the way), the Diamond Pizza collection gives it some equally luxe friends. Two of the four pizzas rely on seasonal ingredients, meaning the menu has a lifespan. Here's the rundown.

Caviar pizza

It's fun, it's silly, it's absurd – and Mercato's general manager Anna Müller, who cites inspiration from Buzzfeed Video's Worth It series, is the first to acknowledge that the caviar pizza treads into gimmick territory. But who'd even buy a pizza that hovers around 1,000RMB? More than you might think apparently, with Mercato selling 18 last month, or roughly one every other day. It's a super simple dish meant to highlight the caviar. Think flatbread plus caviar with a bit of ricotta to hold it all together. 'We use 100 grams of pizza dough instead of the standard 200 grams,' says Mercato chef Kelvin Chai. 'Why do we do it small? We're trying to give the caviar some space to shine, so the ratio of 30 grams of caviar to 100 grams of pizza dough is perfect.' The pizza is brushed with olive oil, baked in the oven until browned and crispy, then topped with a house-made ricotta cheese, frisée, chives and mounds of caviar, and finished with lemon zest and fleur de sel. Is it worth the 888RMB? Depends how much you like caviar – but we will say the flatbread is a delightful vehicle for eating it.

Foie gras and fig pizza

This foie gras and fig pizza (328RMB) turns heavily on the fruit, so expect only to see it on the menu as long as fig season lasts. Chai spreads Mercato's pizza dough with tomato sauce, then showers it with fontina and parmesan cheese and places fatty chunks of Rougie foie gras and cherry peppers on top. After the pizza comes out of the oven, he layers roasted fig slices on top of the foie gras and pillowy-soft dough and adds a fresh pop of garden cress. Super luscious and juicy, it's bordering on over-the-top in richness and we absolutely love it for that. Also great reheated for breakfast the next day.

Matsutake pizza

Another hyper-seasonal pizza, this one (298RMB) showcases fresh matsutake mushrooms. It's a white pizza (sans tomato sauce) with a three-cheese base of mozzarella, fontina and Parmesan, piled with chopped matsutake, seasoned with salt and olive oil, then popped in the oven. Afterwards, Chai finishes it with finely sliced parsley and fresh black pepper. Light and subtle, this is the understated foil to the opulent foie gras pizza.

Black truffle pizza

A classic that you may already be familiar with, we'll enlighten those of you who aren't. There's a reason Mercato sells around 1,000 of these a month and it's because they are dee-effing-lightful. Like the matsutake iteration, the black truffle pizza (218RMB) has a three-cheese mix (mozzarella, fontina and Parmesan) that's sprinkled on top a layer of Italian truffle paste before an egg is cracked into the centre. After it's pulled out of the oven, Chai showers the whole thing in shavings of fresh black truffle, producing a fragrance so redolent that should be bottled and sold as Mercato's signature scent. (Edit: maybe even a bath bomb so you can go all in and just bathe in it.) The best part? It tastes exactly like it smells.

📍Mercato, Sixth Floor, Three on the Bund, 3 Zhongshan Dong Yi Lu, near Guangdong Lu.

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