Latest news with #AprilFool
The Irish Sun
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Irish Sun
Restaurant goes viral for serving up the world's most ‘disgusting pudding' – can you tell what's wrong?
A RESTAURANT has gone viral after serving up 'detergent sponges' and 'dishwater' as deserts. The weird desserts served at KANTIN at The Granary in Malaysia aren't actually cleaning supplies and dirty water - they are actually edible desserts and drinks. Advertisement 4 The dessert and drink cost just over £4 Credit: Instagram/@kantingranary 4 The restaurant's media team makes it look like the drink is served directly from the sink Credit: Instagram/@kantingranary The hyper-realistic dessert looks like a sponge that has just been used to wash the plates out the back of the restaurant. And when it is served, it even includes the soapy suds and a garnishing of detergent, that looks like washing up liquid. But all of this is actually edible. The dessert consists of a yellow and green sponge cake, cleverly decorated to look like a dish-cleaning sponge. Advertisement Read more on restaurants The actual flavours include a lemon butter sponge with English orange marmalade, topped with a lemon foam. The 'detergent' is pandan lime syrup. To go with the dessert, guests get a complimentary cup of 'dishwater' that servers claim is 'curry flavoured' due to the staff just having their team meal - which was a chicken curry. In reality, the drink is a mix of turmeric, ginger water and coconut oil . Advertisement Most read in News Travel Customers have been left shocked with how realistic it looks, with one person commenting on social media: "Omg. It really does look like sponge! You got the lil foam on it too!" The dessert - originally part of an April Fool's prank offering - will be served in the restaurant until the beginning of June. 'World's best burger' finally returns to UK after nearly a DECADE of fans begging 'this is a need, not a want' The dessert also only costs £4.73. The restaurant also serves a variety of other - more normal - dishes, and was award a Traveller's Choice Award from Tripadvisor in 2024. Advertisement According to Tripadvisor, visitors should: "EAT AT YOUR OWN RISK! EVERYTHING IS ADDICTIVE!" The restaurant is located in a historical building - The Granary - which was built back in 1885. The venue serves Sarawakian food with a twist of innovation. Also, a popular Hong Kong restaurant that's famous for its 'delicious' menu will soon open its first UK site. Advertisement Plus, The Sun's Sophie Swietochowski headed 4 The restaurant calls it a 'prank dessert' Credit: Instagram/@kantingranary 4 The sponge is actually lemon, marmalade and lime flavoured and the drink is a mix of turmeric, coconut and ginger Credit: Instagram/@kantingranary
Scottish Sun
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scottish Sun
Restaurant goes viral for serving up the world's most ‘disgusting pudding' – can you tell what's wrong?
Plus, The Sun's Sophie Swietochowski headed on a secret food tour taking you around a capital city DISH UP Restaurant goes viral for serving up the world's most 'disgusting pudding' – can you tell what's wrong? A RESTAURANT has gone viral after serving up 'detergent sponges' and 'dishwater' as deserts. The weird desserts served at KANTIN at The Granary in Malaysia aren't actually cleaning supplies and dirty water - they are actually edible desserts and drinks. 4 The dessert and drink cost just over £4 Credit: Instagram/@kantingranary 4 The restaurant's media team makes it look like the drink is served directly from the sink Credit: Instagram/@kantingranary The hyper-realistic dessert looks like a sponge that has just been used to wash the plates out the back of the restaurant. And when it is served, it even includes the soapy suds and a garnishing of detergent, that looks like washing up liquid. But all of this is actually edible. The dessert consists of a yellow and green sponge cake, cleverly decorated to look like a dish-cleaning sponge. The actual flavours include a lemon butter sponge with English orange marmalade, topped with a lemon foam. The 'detergent' is pandan lime syrup. To go with the dessert, guests get a complimentary cup of 'dishwater' that servers claim is 'curry flavoured' due to the staff just having their team meal - which was a chicken curry. In reality, the drink is a mix of turmeric, ginger water and coconut oil. Customers have been left shocked with how realistic it looks, with one person commenting on social media: "Omg. It really does look like sponge! You got the lil foam on it too!" The dessert - originally part of an April Fool's prank offering - will be served in the restaurant until the beginning of June. 'World's best burger' finally returns to UK after nearly a DECADE of fans begging 'this is a need, not a want' The dessert also only costs £4.73. The restaurant also serves a variety of other - more normal - dishes, and was award a Traveller's Choice Award from Tripadvisor in 2024. According to Tripadvisor, visitors should: "EAT AT YOUR OWN RISK! EVERYTHING IS ADDICTIVE!" The restaurant is located in a historical building - The Granary - which was built back in 1885. The venue serves Sarawakian food with a twist of innovation. Also, a popular Hong Kong restaurant that's famous for its 'delicious' menu will soon open its first UK site. Plus, The Sun's Sophie Swietochowski headed on a secret food tour taking you around a capital city – it should be on everyone's bucket list. 4 The restaurant calls it a 'prank dessert' Credit: Instagram/@kantingranary
Malaysian Reserve
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Malaysian Reserve
Elitist no more, caviar is turning casual
by MARINE DO-VALE WHEN Burger King announced it was selling caviar with nuggets at its French restaurants on April 1, many people assumed it was an April Fool's joke. But as news spread on social media, buyers rushed to try one of the world's most expensive delicacies paired with a humble and highly commoditised piece of deep-fried chicken while limited stocks lasted. For €19 (RM94.43), they got seven nuggets, mayonnaise and a 10g pouch of Chinese-origin caviar from the Astana brand, which explained it had worked with the fast-food giant to 'make the caviar of chefs available to as many people as possible'. It was a marketing coup — the story quickly went viral after being picked up by French news outlets — but it also revealed how the image of caviar as an out-of-reach luxury product is rapidly changing. As with most new food trends, interest in the exclusive fish eggs is being driven by online influencers and celebrities. Rihanna posted a video to her 150 million followers on Instagram on Dec 20 last year showing her eating nuggets topped with caviar. 'I don't like how much I like this,' she began. US celebrity chef David Chang is also a champion, with a 2022 Instagram video showing him dunking a deep-fried chicken leg into a 1kg tin of caviar — 'one of my favourite most obscene things to do' — which racked up more than three million views. He credits New York chef Wylie Dufresne with first adding it to the menu at his influential WD~50 restaurant in the 2010s. Last year, the US Open tennis tournament caused a stir by selling a US$100 (RM437) box of six nuggets with caviar created by the luxury Manhattan fried chicken restaurant Coqodaq. Producers and food writers have mixed feelings about the popularisation of the culinary indulgence, which sells for €1,000 to €30,000 a kg depending on the type. The high prices are due to rarity and the high investment producers make in the sturgeon fish needed for caviar, which start to produce eggs only after eight or 10 years. The most expensive caviar — the one famously preferred by Hollywood star Elizabeth Taylor — is the roe of the beluga sturgeon, which takes at least 15 years to mature. Mikael Petrossian, head of the French brand Petrossian, said there was a 'demystification' of caviar underway. 'Caviar doesn't necessarily have to come in a large tin with silver serving pieces…You can enjoy the product in a much more relaxed way,' he said. 'I personally like eating caviar with crisps.' The French caviar producer Neuvic founder Laurent Deverlanges said his company also aims to make it 'less formal'. He posted a review of the 'King Nugget Caviar' menu online, concluding that 'it works, even if you can't really taste the caviar much'. But Olivier Cabarrot, the head of the France-based Prunier brand whose caviar restaurant is one of the most famous in the world, pushes back on the idea of it becoming a regular product. 'In terms of gastronomy, there is nothing as expensive. It's hard to talk about it becoming 'democratised',' he said. 'But we can speak of greater accessibility, achieved through the sale of smaller quantities rather than lower prices.' Many distributors including Petrossian and Prunier offer tins of 10g, 20g or 30g, helping to attract a younger clientele. Remi Dechambre, a food journalist at Le Parisien newspaper, said people associated caviar with opulence and refinement less and less. 'We've completely moved on from that…Consumption has become a little more common, a little less formal — even though it still makes people dream,' he told AFP. But knowing how to enjoy the product properly remains essential, said supplier Le Comptoir du Caviar MD Francoise Boisseaud. 'There's a whole education to be done,' she said about the different types — 'baeri', 'oscietre', 'sevruga' or beluga — adding that 'the richness of the world of caviar is infinite — just like wine'. For her, the best way to enjoy it is with a crusty baguette and butter, not with fried chicken or crisps. Robin Panfili, a food journalist who runs the food blog 'Entree, Plat, Dessert', said Burger King had pulled off a 'marketing trick'. 'By trying to bring together two worlds that are completely opposed — luxury and fast food — the aim is to shake up the codes, to demystify a product historically seen as luxurious and elitist. It's visual, it's viral, it sparks discussion because it's provocative,' he told AFP. — AFP This article first appeared in The Malaysian Reserve weekly print edition
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Klarna used an AI avatar of its CEO to deliver earnings, it said
Sebastian Siemiatkowski is leaning all the way into the idea that his buy-now-pay-later, IPO-bound startup Klarna is an AI company. When Klarna delivered updated quarterly earnings on Monday, it was his AI avatar (pictured above) that presented the highlights, according to the company's YouTube video. Other than AI Siemiatkowski's admission, it wasn't obvious that this was AI. There were only a few subtle signs: AI Siemiatkowski didn't blink as much as most humans do. The voice sync was good, but not perfect. The AI was also wearing a brown jacket that looked a lot like the one from a widely circulated corporate photo of his human self (though the shirt was different). Klarna, which is getting ready to debut as a public company, was using the updated financials to tout AI as a driving factor for hitting 100 million users. It credited its use of AI for a fourth consecutive profitable quarter, explaining that it "streamlined its workforce by ~40%," the company said in its blog post, driving up revenue per employee to nearly $1 million. Human Siemiatkowski specified to CNBC that 'the company has shrunk from about 5,000 to now almost 3,000 employees.' He's not the first CEO to poke fun at the idea of an AI replacing a CEO. AI sales agent startup Artisan, known for its viral "stop hiring humans" ad campaign, posted an April Fool's video of its CEO Jaspar Carmichael-Jack being fired and replaced with an AI CEO. But maybe the idea of AIs replacing CEOs isn't a total joke. While it's certainly true that some CEOs — especially at startups — do get their hands dirty coding features or cold calling prospects, a CEO's main jobs are to set strategy, make decisions, and take responsibility for those decisions. Who better than an AI built on a SATA reasoning model to digest large swatches of company data, study gobs of successful business strategy, and use that to make decisions? In fact, research published in Harvard Business Review last year found that an AI could, mostly, outperform human CEOs, based on a model using GPT-4o. However, the AI CEO also quickly got fired by the study's virtual board. This is because it did poorly responding to "black swan events, such as market collapses during the COVID-19 pandemic," the researchers found. Still, as AI advocates like to point out, these are early days. Future AI CEOs may learn to excel at that, too. Klarna did not immediately respond to a request for further comment. Sign in to access your portfolio
The Sun
20-05-2025
- The Sun
I'm a ‘trans widow' – I missed the signs my husband identified as female… but what happened next was truly horrifying
WHEN Sophie's husband told her he wanted a divorce so he could live life as a woman, she thought it was a late April Fool's joke. But her partner of 26 years was telling the truth - claiming he'd known he had always wanted to identify as female ever since the age of 19. The 41-year-old "trans widow" was left stunned by the revelation - while she says her ex never instigated sex, she believed the couple had always had a normal marriage otherwise. After breaking the news to her and moving out of the marital home, she says just two days later, he started wearing female clothing and wigs. *Sophie, from Southampton, Hampshire, said: "In my eyes, my husband is a 'he'. I don't want to offend anybody by using the wrong pronouns. "I'm a 'trans widow', my husband's identity has died, so therefore I'm a widow to the person who I thought I was with. "He called me out in the garden away from the children and said, 'I need to leave this relationship and live my life as a woman'. "I told him we have children together and laughed, I thought he was joking. "It was the beginning of April and I said 'this has to be a late April Fool's joke.' "But he said he was deadly serious and if he doesn't do this now, he never will. "I just went into absolute meltdown mode. I remember sitting in my car and crying for hours and hours." Phone bombshell While the bombshell rocked Sophie's family, it was just the start - the truth about his alleged seedy online behaviour was later uncovered by a series of bizarre phone calls. Five months after the split, the full-time mum said she started receiving calls from strangers asking if she was "working" and when she quizzed one bloke about what he meant, he admitted "sex stuff". Exasperated, Sophie demanded to know where one caller got her number from and was stunned when he sent her a text of what appeared to be her ex's profile advertising sex services online. The profile reads 'hi guys I'm a 48 yr old trans woman out to give you a good time', advertising prices ranging from £70 for 30 minutes up to £1,000 for an overnight visit. Sophie's ex was reportedly using her old mobile as a burner phone, unaware that she had left a voicemail message directing callers to her new number. She told The Sun: "In September, I was on the school run and I started getting phone calls asking whether or not I was working. "I said 'what do you mean working?' and they said, 'sex stuff'. I was absolutely gobsmacked. "The next person that rang I asked, 'Where did you get my number from?' They sent me a screenshot of my ex-husband selling himself as a trans woman. "He was using the mobile phone that I gave back to him as a burner phone, but didn't realise I'd left a voice message saying to ring me on my new number. "[I thought] 'Not only did you leave the family, but you're now selling yourself as a trans woman'. "I stopped the children from seeing him because that's not a safe environment to be in. "He moved so quickly. He was wearing female clothes and wigs a couple days later when he moved out." 'Grieving process' While the mum-of-three claims she doesn't have an issue with how people choose to identify, she feels like the man she married has 'died'. "The person I knew has died and it's a grieving process, but it feels like we're not allowed to grieve." Sophie said it has massively affected how she approaches relationships, as she now struggles with trust issues. Despite the request to divorce coming out of the blue in April 2020, Sophie admits their relationship felt more like a friendship - as her ex didn't initiate sex. While she admits she thought nobody would love her again, she said she is now in a new relationship and feels 'lucky' to find love. Sophie said: "I have massive trust issues, it's hard to trust what anybody says. It's just very sad, it was heartbreaking. "Once I found out he wanted to identify as a woman since the age of 19, things started clicking into place about our relationship. "There were little things, he would never instigate sex, it was always me. "That was tough and then there were little things missing in my house. "Now I've realised he was taking my clothes and he admitted he had been wearing them and taking them to work. "I still see that as deception. I see it as he was using me to hide his true self. "There were good moments but we were almost like friends, not lovers, it was almost like having a lodger in the house. "I thought nobody would love me again. I have found love again which is beautiful and I'm lucky. "I was absolutely scared to get into a new relationship. My trust issues are on the floor. "I'm very much like, 'do you still fancy me? Am I the person you want to be with?" Sophie says she struggled to tell her children the reason for the divorce and aims to raise awareness about the children of parents who transition. She says: "I really struggled to explain it to them, you have to be very careful with not alienating the parent. "I wanted to make sure my feelings around what he's done did not affect them. "I said 'Daddy has left because he is not happy with his body'. "There are some questions that I can't answer. It's really hard. There is no textbook and no support, there is nothing. "If a father has a car crash or is disabled there would be somewhere to go but there's nothing to support. "There is nothing for children to have that support when a parent is transitioning." *All the names in this story have been changed
