Food is more than just fuel. It’s something that connects people together. No matter where you come from, chances are good that you eat at least one thing that you can discuss with someone — even if they live on the other side of the world! Food is just that powerful. We not only like to eat food, but we tend to look at people that have a certain type of food as being more powerful than us — the rich and famous eat in restaurants that we could never think to eat in.
Speaking of rich and famous, let’s strip away the celebrities for a minute and just focus on food, okay? If you’re thinking about sinking your teeth into some fine foods, these five should definitely get you excited.
1. White Truffles
OK, we know that it’s not going to be the sexiest food that you’ve ever seen in your life. However, this is one of the world’s most admired and treasured foods. In fact, people pay good money to get a pound of truffles. They go on everything from pasta to being tucked into casseroles and even in whole meats like duck and chicken.
It’s expensive though. Truffles are actually very rare now in nature, which means that the prices can get pretty high. How high? Well, the owner of a casino in Macau paid almost half a million dollars for just 1.5kg of truffles. That’s not that much at all! Generally speaking, truffles run at about $1500 – $3,000 per pound, especially if we’re talking white truffles. A truffle is a special type of mushroom, but it has a completely different taste. Some say that taste is out of this world.
Now, chefs get by with using what’s known as truffle oil to simulate the taste. Not all truffle oils actually have any real truffle — it’s a synthetic flavor. However, if you have truffle oil over your French fries, you’ll definitely be able to taste the truffle scent and aroma in your mouth. This can actually be a good thing for people that don’t normally like mushrooms — they get the flavor without really having to eat real truffles. Still, it’s a delicacy that many people want to try.
2. Saffron
Saffron is beautiful as a flower — it’s actually part of the saffron crocus flower. What makes this spice so expensive is that it takes almost a hundred thousand flowers to make one pound. As you might imagine, that means a lot of hours of manpower to harvest and prepare the spice, which drives up the cost. The spice can usually be obtained for $500/pound.
3. Wagyu Beef
Check out that marbling! If you don’t know what you’re looking at, you’re actually looking at Wagyu Beef. This is a special cow that is in Japan and fed the best grass and special treatment — massages are common, and farmers make sure to speak soft words around the cows to make them feel more at peace. They have plenty of space to roam, which means that the meat tends to be a lot tenderer by default. The type of marbling that you get with Wagyu cows just can’t be beat.
200 grams of a fillet goes for more than 100 dollars.
Especially interesting is the fact that the Food Network ran an episode of Iron Chef America that was nothing but a battle of Wagyu beef. Even though it was American Wagyu — that is, Wagyu cows bred with Angus to create a hybrid that’s still juicy and tender, as the United States outlawed the importing of Wagyu beef from Japan completely — that’s still an expensive show to run!
4. Amazing Chocolate!
This is chocolate that’s considered to be the most expensive in the world. It’s called Chocopologie, and it’s produced by Knipschildt. The chocolate is $2,600 per pound and is a beautiful chocolate truffle. It contains a black truffle (the mushroom kind!) and 70% Valrhona cacao. Those that have had it say it’s creamy and delicious, which is always a plus. The price is still too steep for most people to ever taste it.
5. Kopi Luwak coffee
There’s only 500 pounds of beans produced every year that are true Kopi Luwak. This raises the price of these special coffee beans to $300/pound, which means that you’re definitely not going to be drinking this every day!
What a lot of people don’t realize about this coffee is that the beans are actually extracted from the waste of civet cats. There’s something about the digestion process that produces coffee with amazing flavor, but knowing this little fact doesn’t make you crave this coffee, does it? You won’t need to worry about whether or not Starbucks is going to serve this anytime soon — they won’t. It’s just too expensive to be served on a mass appeal and the production is so low that they wouldn’t really be able to serve it regularly.
So there you have it — five of the world’s most expensive foods. We left off the sandwiches, burgers, and sundaes. We could have also included caviar, but we decided to leave it off too.
So tell us — would you try any of these foods? Have you tried any of these foods already? If so, how did you like them? Don’t be shy — you know you want to comment!