RedEye Gets Sticker Shock At Eataly

By Lisa White in Food on Dec 4, 2013 10:00PM

Chuck Sudo/Chicagoist

With all the Eataly mayhem building up around the city, we’ve had more than our fair share of photos of delicious Italian food, heavenly Nutella bars and insufferable orange Crocs on Mario Batali’s feet. (See them in the photo above, taunting you?) Whether you learned about Eataly months ago, standing in line or from word of mouth it is clearly the place to be this week in the Chicago food scene.

Our friends over at RedEye went deeper and asked the question on many minds: what are the most expensive things you can purchase at Eataly? Most journalists aren’t rolling around in piles of money so we enjoy a good round of sticker shock as we exclaim “really?!” and dollar signs light up our eyes.

Unsurprisingly the list leans heavy on items with truffles and booze; throw the word "truffle" on anything and you can upsell it. Some products are worth the price. Others? Not so much. And in the grand scheme of expensive wines what they found was nothing to bat an eye at. We also weren’t that surprised by expensive balsamic vinegars. The balsamic vinegar industry is vicious, people.

What did surprise us more were some home and non-food items. $162 for a pepper grinder seems a little steep, but we know they exist. A list price of $21.80 for a plain blue coffee mug doesn’t fly in our book. Neither does $22.40 for imported mint mouthwash. We’ll stick to domestic brands instead, thanks.

RedEye also picked up and held a $565 bottle of wine that was sitting out on display despite the fact cheaper wines were behind glass doors. We hope they move those units somewhere out of reach, otherwise someone might be crying over spilled wine very soon.

Check out more of their pricey finds here.