The World’s Most Expensive Foods

Are you a food fanatic?

No, neither am I.

However, I do have a penchant for exotic dishes especially when served in exotic restaurants. But one thing I'm not good at is that I have a bad memory to recall the name of the dishes I eat, what more write about them.

Today, I found this exotic article in an exotic newspaper -- Utusan Sarawak and would like to share it with you guys. It's about The World’s Most Expensive Foods.

No, I'm not in Sarawak right now, but I happen to have an e-browse access to the newspaper, apart from a few others.

What's an e-browse newspaper? I'll tell you that in another posting.

This article says that among the most expensive food in the world is the white truffle mushroom which costs in excess of US$5,000 a kilogram. The record price for this truffle was paid last year, in December, when Stanley Ho, the owner of the Macau casino paid $330,000 for 1.5kg of truffles.

Another expensive food is the herb saffron. Saffron, is also known as spice and is grown worldwide, derived from the saffron crocus flower. The herb is bitter and its price can come up to as much as 12,000 pound sterling a kilo (another article quoted the price to between US$1100 to US$11,000 per kilogram).

Another type of food -- the caviar is so expensive that only the very rich can afford as it costs more than USD5,000 per kilogram. The most expensive caviar is the Caviar Almas which is produced from the Beluga Sturgeon fish. It is said that Beluga caviar comes from a fish over 100 years old, that is virtually unchanged for 120 million years. This type of fish can only be found in the Caspian Sea or Black Sea.

The next most expensive food in the world is a French potato, La Bonnotte. Annually, only 100 tons of this top quality potatoes are cultivated and collected. The potato fields require to be fertilized only with seaweed in a climate shaped by the nearby sea on the island Noirmoutier. The cost of one kilogram of La Bonnotte can reach more than US$500 since this type of potato is almost extinct.

The last most of expensive food in the world according to this article is a type of coffee drink. This type of drink is called the Luwak Coffee or civet coffee. Planted in the island of Sumatra, Indonesia, the Luwak Coffee is unique as such that it is not harvested by humans but civets (musang).

This type of wild animal eats the coffee berries and then excretes them. The berries together with other excretes of the civets are collected and washed, dried in the sun, roasted and brewed. The final product is an aromatic coffee with much less bitterness.

The total annual production is said to be only around 500 pounds of beans. A cup of Luwak Coffee can catch a price of more than US$100, while the price of a pound of the bean is more than US$300.

For more information, read the wikipedia entry for Kopi Luwak here.

So, guys if you can afford it, try this exotic Luwak coffee blended with civet shit. Must taste it the next time I have a chance visiting Sumatra.

See related articles here and here.