Menu With $110 Dirt Debuts In Japan

A menu with $110 dirt has debuted in a French restaurant in Japan, offering diners a chance to eat things like potato starch and dirt soup.

Ne Quittez Pas, a Southern France-inspired restaurant in Japan, has put together the $110 dirt menu for those with distinguished and somewhat disgusting tastes. The restaurant was started by Chef Toshio Tanabe, who was trained in France and worked at several Michelin-starred restaurants, ABC News noted.

RocketNews24 actually gave the full menu with $110 dirt a try, documenting the results. Though the idea of a dirt menu sounds like a gimmick, the review actually found the courses to be full of flavor.

The salad with dirt dressing:

“As simply as I can describe it, this dish featured fresh vegetables like eggplant, tomato and turnips grilled and served with a dressing made from dirt and a fine powder made from ground popcorn. Here too the surprise wasn’t the dirt, but the deliciousness of the vegetables. The tomatoes had the perfect balance of sweetness and acidity, and the eggplant hadn’t taken on any bitterness from the grilling.”

For dessert, there was dirt ice cream and a dirt gratin:

“Perhaps because of the mildness of the food, the complex sweetness of these items was all the richer. And finally, there was a refreshing dirt mint tea to cleanse the palate, though it does seem strange to describe something made with dirt as cleansing or refreshing. It looked like muddy water (sorry, but it’s true), but the minty taste was bracing.”

The menu with $110 dirt isn’t using your everyday garden soil. The restaurant imports its dirt from Sri Lanka and India through the company Protoleag. It is all tested for safety and purity.