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5 of the World's Most Expensive Foods

5 of the World's Most Expensive Foods

by Mireille Kilgour : July 8th, 2014

Sure, we all like a classy meal every now and again, but these record-holding foods take the word 'expensive' to a whole new level.

5. $2,800 Wagyu Steak

Wagyu beef certainly has a reputation for being of a high quality, and quite pricey. Wagyu beef comes from Japanese beef cattle, and this particular steak comes from the elite Kobe varietal, raised in the Hyogo prefecture. Kobe beef are said to be fed only beer and massaged by hand to make them ultra tender and thoroughly marbled with fat. While Kobe steaks in Japan will fetch over $200 in some restaurants, so far the most expensive one has been dished out in New York's Craftsteak. While you can get a 'Japanese A5 wagyu steak for $275 a piece on the regular menu, the restaurant recently served up a full Wagyu rib eye for $2,800 at a private party.

4. $4,200 Pizza

Pizza Royale 007 is the name of the expensive pizza from Mr Domenico Crolla, head of the award-winning restaurant Bella Napoli. Crolla has made a name for himself as a pizza connoisseur – judging the International Pizza Challenge and the Italian World Championships in 2008, and the Pizza Olympics the year before. But perhaps he is most famous for the World's Most Expensive Pizza, a 12 inch affair that is topped with extravagant ingredients like caviar soaked in Dom Perignon champagne, lobster marinated in cognac, Scottish smoked salmon, venison medallions, some fine prosciutto, balsamic vinegar and a dusting of 24-carat gold flakes. Sound tasty? Sure. But would you pay $4,200 for it? Well someone did. The pizza was created so that it could be sold at auction on eBay and raise funds for The Fred Hollows Foundation. Italian lawyer Maurizio Morelli was the man to snap it up.

3. $25,000 Chocolate Sundae

The prize for The World's Most Expensive Dessert (quite literally, it has a Guinness World Record) goes to a small chocolate sundae found in New York. It's named The Frozen Haute Chocolate and is made from a blend of 28 different cocoas from around the world while being infused with five grams of edible 23-karat gold. Then there's whipped cream, a little extra gold, and a side of La Madeline au Truffle from Knipschildt Chocolatier. It comes in a goblet lined with edible gold and a gold spoon set with white and chocolate-colored diamonds. And just to top it off, you get a bonus 18K gold bracelet with diamonds slung around the base of the goblet. How did this crazy treat come to be? The restaurant/cafe that serves it, Serendipity 3, collaborated with jeweler Euphoria New York to create this dessert gem.

2. $26,117 Melons

shutterstock_131713715 It might seem odd to Australians, a land where we are blessed with much fresh produce, that a pack of 20 cherries may cost you over $100 in Japan. But Japanese malls present their fruit and vegetables as though they were jewels, in individual boxes lined with silk and wrapped with bows. Fruit is considered a status symbol in Japan, and cantaloupe melons are one of the most highly regarded. Top quality melons need to be perfect spheres, with a smooth and well patterned rind and a little T-shaped stalk left on. One of the highest prices ever paid for fruit was for a pair of Yubari melons at auction in 2008 that went for 2.5 million yen – about AU$26,117. While the melons certainly are prestigious and are often used as gifts to friends and colleagues, the high price could also be attributed to a sympathetic buyer, as the town of Yubari (which produces the melons) went bust the year before in 2007.

1. $332,000 Burger

And coming in at the number one spot for the world's most expensive food is a little, quite frankly ugly, burger. What makes this bun-clad meal so special is that the beef patty is 100% grown in a lab. Yes, the beef has been cultivated from stem cells that were taken from a biopsy of a living cow.

The inventor, a Dutch scientist by the name of Dr Mark Post, created the meat in the hopes that it can help feed the world and reduce the environmental impacts of food production. Raising livestock for beef is considered troublesome for the environment as it reportedly contributes to 18% of greenhouse gas emissions and uses 30% of the world's ice-free land. However, perhaps even more worryingly is that the world's population is expected to grow to 9.6 billion people by 2050, an unsustainable number for farmers that is predicted to lead to mass food shortages.

The co-founder of Google, Sergey Brin, helped fund the science project, which cost $332,00 to produce. Commercial production of the cultured beef could begin in as little as a decade, with the large cost of production the current barrier. But with all things considered, this is one of the few expensive foods that may be truly worth the price tag.

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Mireille Kilgour

Mireille Kilgour has been an entrepreneur for 35 years in the hospitality sector. French born, she has been an accomplished business owner and operator for a number of Sydney venues. Leading the industry with high profile institutions such as Lamrock Café Bondi, she has endless passion for the industry, and now has the pleasure of supporting restaurants to fill their tables with the new Good Food Gift Card program.