Forget caviar, the hottest luxury ingredient is crab

It’s a perplexing time in the world of luxury ingredients. Prestigious products are now inextricably linked to fast food. Caviarnow adorns the chicken nuggets; truffle is present in supermarket hummus andStarbucks Egg Bites; wagyu beef becomessmashed into burgersand created the menu for Burger King in the United Kingdom. Even the lobster, bright red and festive, has gone from being an attention-grabbing centerpiece to a mac and cheese mix.

However, the crab retains its mystery. It is appreciated for its delicately flavored and finely textured meat, as well as its fatty and rich eggs and tomalley, culinary categories in their own right. Now, large live specimens from around the world, such as the Japanese snow crab and the Norwegian red king crab, are the symbols of luxury this season.

“Even the cheapest crab we sell is usually double the price of Maine or Nova The cost of lobster in Scotland,” says Ian Purkayastha, founder ofRoyal foods. “The price of king crab has definitely reached an all-time high.” Because their stocks and availability have been severely affected bypolitical and ecological upheavalsshellfish now wholesale for $70 to $85 a pound, he said. Retail consumers could spend more than $1,200 to have aUnique and live 10 pound Norwegian red king crabdelivered to their home from Regalis. Believe it or not, that’s good news, he adds: “Prices are going to keep going higher and higher. It’s not like you can farm a king crab.” He wouldn’t be surprised if wholesale prices for king crab exceeded $100 per pound within five years.

The menu at $888

Take stock of today’s splurge-worthy dishes and dinners, and you’ll see: American diners and restaurateurs are embracing the luxury of crab. With the explosion ofomakase style dinnerquality prevails more than ever over quantity. Take, for example,Sushidokoro Mekumi. Recently opened in New York’s Hudson Square, this outpost of a two-Michelin-star restaurant in Kanazawa, on Japan’s west coast, is offering a crab-centric omakase dinner for $888 per person, excluding drinks, for a few weeks this winter.

The current star of the meal is the male snow crab, transported from Kanaiwa, a port city in Ishikawa Prefecture, to New York in two days, at wholesale prices of up to $675 each. It takes three to accommodate eight people each evening. All December places are sold out, but January places are available.

Mekumi chef Hajime Kumabe explains simply how good the ingredient is: “We almost never add anything else, just a little salt as seasoning. » Among the 18 to 20 dishes are kani gayu, a delicate rice porridge made only of crab, crab broth, rice and salt; mokuzugani, or Japanese crab, simply grilled over binchotan charcoal; and kobako gani, a female snow crab boiled immediately after being caught by Japanese fishermen, trained to do so to the restaurant’s specifications. Its meat is prepared with its internal and external eggs and served in its shell.

(An even more valuable and expensive crab will appear in New York at the end of the year. Taiza gani, a snow crab from the cold waters of Kyoto is so rare that even in Japan it is known as “ghost crab.” Only five boats are authorized to fish it. It will be served for two nights at the new Tribeca kaiseki Muku restaurant; the $1,295 menus sold out quickly.)

The value of the crab does not just come from its original state or the distance traveled; it’s also in the work that it takes to put it on the plate. HASYamadathe New York kaiseki restaurant which has just obtained four stars atNew York Timesit can take 45 minutes of concentrated work for chefs to extract the meat from a single 2-pound kegani, or horsehair crab, one of the shellfish likely to appear on its 10-course, $295 menu in early winter. You can also find Hokkaido snow crab on chawanmushi, a tasty egg custard, and Dungeness crab in the donabe closing course.

Rice for $100

Outside of New York, crab is featured twice a week at the kaiseki-inspired Crab Experience inKinkana Thai-Japanese restaurant in Los Angeles. “Crab is my favorite,” says chef-owner Nan Yimcharoen, who grew up cooking and eating it with her grandmother in Bangkok. During the $250, 11-course dinner, she serves dishes like steamed live Hanasaki gani, a spiny Hokkaido king crab, and open-faced shrimp and scallop shumai, topped with snow crab and sawagani, a small Japanese river crab, fried and eaten whole.

HASFishermanthe wood-fired seafood restaurant on San Francisco’s Embarcadero, savvy diners know to order the off-menu crab rice for $100. The dish is made up of two courses; a meat-filled crab shell topped with Angler’s XO sauce and koshihikari seaweed rice with crab butter, sake-cured salmon roe and crispy garlic chips. The variety of crab changes according to the seasons and the day’s catch: king crab is on the horizon; Box and Dungeness crabs have recently been featured. (If they can’t get good ones in California waters, the dish simply isn’t available.)

Dungeness, which James Beard called “a meal the gods intended only for the pure palate,” is also a star attraction (and the most expensive menu item) at two of the country’s most notable regional Indian restaurants. At Unapologetic Foods’ He mentioned In New York’s West Village, diners are advised to pre-order the $145 Kanyakumari Nandu Masala for two, featuring a 1- to 1.5-pound crab cooked with cumin, black pepper, coriander seeds “and other spices too numerous to mention,” says chef Vijay Kumar.

The crab is accompanied by coconut rice and crispy-edged parotta, for a delicious sauce and textural contrast to the silky crab meat. (The crab is an obsession through Unapologetic Foods restaurants.) Meanwhile at Naduchef Sujan Sarkar’s new restaurant in Chicago, about 15 diners a week order the Keralan Crab Milagu Fry, available in large and large sizes for $135 and $185. For this, a whole Dungeness crab is cooked with a tomato and Tellicherry pepper sauce and served with ghee rice.

The $2,000 crab deal

And then there is the ceremony around the live king crab. This fall atOctobera Korean-Chinese restaurant in Central New York, Steve and Christina Jang (owners of New Wonjo BBQ, a loyal Koreatown neighbor) began offering a feast featuring the three-part creature: steamed with butter, garlic, soy sauce, cabbage and mushrooms on vermicelli; dry fried Sichuan style; and as fried rice, with tomalley. An 8-pound crab, enough for five or six people, recently sold for $850, they said, adding that they are keeping the price low while they get the word out.

HASRiviera Coalwhich opened at Las Vegas’ Bellagio in November, the food has to work overtime to compete with the flash: alongside works by Miró, Picasso and Renoir,the restaurant owns Fortuna, a 33-foot-long Riva yachtto give some guests a better view of the hotel’s famous fountains.

The restaurant’s king crab might just be the ideal crustacean. It’s prepared “blackberry style,” to reflect the abundant Italian and Chinese flavors of Mulberry Street, which runs through Little Italy and New York’s Chinatown. Priced at $175 to $200 per pound, a large product could tip the scales at over $2,000. This is potentially the most expensive item in a place that, for many people, represents luxury.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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