A new fad is hitting top restaurants and private parties in London and its popularity is threatening to spread all over the world: dishes highlighted with real gold and silver. 

And now for the first time, a department store is offering the precious flakes of riches, hoping to seduce fans of exotic cuisine.

The high street shop Selfridges is exclusively selling a variety of  23-carat gold and silver sprinkles and leaves marketed by the brand Food Bling. And orders have been pouring in from across the planet, including fashionable destinations such as New York and Paris.

The edible precious metals are flavourless and are very light. They can therefore be combined with various dishes, sweet or savoury, or even presented in cocktails.

Italian food author Laura Santini has created a product called Easy Taste Magic. Santini claimed that people, probably due to the recession, have wanted to feel special and precious flakes offers an inexpensive way to add some razzmatazz to a party.

The writer, also Santini’s manager in Belgravia, added that a simple dish sprinkled with these bits of gold or silver are transformed into a meal fit for a king.

The launch of the gold and silver ‘food’, presented in a £14.99 sprinkler, has been priced prior to the recent jump in the price of precious metal.

A rising number of restaurants in the British capital have moved towards the gold and silver trend. At the moment Londoners can visit Chelsea’s Rasoi Vineet Bhatia which offers a chicken dish with gold leaf. The newly opened Eastside Inn in Farringdon offers gold-wrapped popcorn.