Luxury on a plate: the 6 most expensive foods in the world
Of course, we all love food, so who can resist a delicious meal in a more luxurious restaurant?
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- Wagyu beef is extremely expensive due to its high fat content, carefully controlled breeding, and stress-free raising conditions, with prices reaching $3,200 for a premium rib steak.
- Civet coffee, known as Kopi Luwak, is unique because the beans pass through a civet's digestive system, enhancing flavor and reducing bitterness, and costs up to $75 per 9-ounce pack.
- Saffron's high price, around $300 per ounce, is justified by the intensive labor of hand-picking each thread from thousands of flowers.
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- Truffles, particularly the rare white variety, are prized delicacies costing up to $1,400 per pound and are often seen as luxury status symbols.
- Beluga caviar, also known as "black gold," is the world’s most expensive food item, sourced from century-old sturgeon and priced over $28,850 per kilogram.
- The Danish brand Knipschildt produces Chocobology, a gourmet dark chocolate truffle with black truffle at its core, sold for $250 apiece.
- Towak chocolate from Ecuador, made with rare high-quality cocoa and crafted in 36 steps, commands a hefty price of $260 for a small
- 5-ounce bar.
But paying upwards of $600 for a burger, or $150 for a pizza sounds ridiculous – but if you have the money, why not? We'll look here at some of the most expensive foods in the world, and obviously this doesn't list all sorts of foods by any means, but I've picked some of the world's favorite foods and the most popular ones.
So let's get started!
1. Wagyu beef
Wagyu beef is the most expensive beef in the world, costing about $275 per pound, while rib steak costs $3,200.
Why is this so expensive price? For steaks, at least, this appears to be due to the very small numbers of aged wagyu ribs suspended, the very low stress levels that cattle experience while raising, and while slaughtering in a specially designed slaughterhouse.
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Wagyō meat itself must come from a specific breed of Japanese cattle with an astonishingly high percentage of fat applied within the meat, allowing the meat to melt in your mouth.
2. Civet coffee
Civet coffee or Kopi Luwak is a type of coffee derived from the coffee cherries consumed by the South Asian palm civet cat and exposed to its digestive system. A quick search finds the price is around $75 per 9-ounce pack.
Cats eat coffee bean cherries to obtain fleshy pulp, and as the bean travels through their digestive system, enzymes leak into the beans, causing them to change.
After collection, thorough washing, sun drying, roasting and fermentation, these grains have a distinct flavor that is much less bitter.
3. Saffron spices
Saffron bears the title of the most expensive seasoning, with Spanish saffron, for example, priced at about $300 per ounce at Walmart.
Saffron comes from saffron petals, and this flower bears up to four flowers, each containing three crimson seasons, and these salmas are picked by hand, dried and then kept from the air, which explains their price.
Since one pound of saffron is equivalent to 80,000 flowers or one acre, use it in moderation.
4. Truffle and mushrooms
Truffles are one of the most expensive materials in the world, and white truffles cost more than black varieties.
Truffles are highly regarded in society and are incredibly delicious, but in the opinion of many people the price is nothing more than a status symbol, as white truffles cost up to $1,400 per pound.
For example, a black pergurd truffle costs $1.47 – and weighs 0.03 ounces!
Matsusuke, a precious Japanese black truffle, holds the title of the most expensive mushroom in the world, costing about $1,000 per pound.
5. Belugan Caviar
The most expensive caviar and the most expensive food in the world is the "diamond" or belugan caviar that comes from the Iranian beluga fish - sturgeon.
A kilogram (2.2 pounds) of "black gold" retails for more than $28,850. The diamonds are produced from the eggs of the rare 60- to 100-year-old white sturgeon, which used to swim in the less polluted southern Caspian Sea.
6. Chocobology
The most expensive chocolate comes from Knipschildt, a Danish chocolate company.
The chocobology is a dark chocolate truffle priced at $250, with a black truffle at its heart. It is made from 70% cocoa valrona blended with truffle oil to form a ganache mixture, and wrapped by hand before sprinkling with cocoa powder.
As for simple chocolate, the twak wins.
The word towak means land and tree in Ecuadorian dialects, and the cost of towak chocolate is about $ 260 per piece, and this high price comes because, according to the manufacturer, it is made from 5% cocoa classified as "high-quality", while regular chocolate is made from the other 95% types of cocoa.
With such a hefty price, you hoped the chocolate bar would be the size of a baseball bat but no, as the piece weighs only 1.5 ounces with a 7-8mm cocoa bean in the middle, and it should be eaten with wooden tongs for flavor.
It takes 36 steps to produce a towak and consists of 81% cocoa and 19% sugar, that's it.
So, there are already many ways to spend a fortune apparently, and you don't have to spend $100,000 on luxury watches or cars, you can spend it on a pound of meat or fungi, and why not? Because you eat it, and that's why!
However, some of these foods look incredibly delicious. Whatever you think about spending a lot on these foods, you have to admit that if you have the money, you want to try them even once!
