For most of us, the idea of forking over a little extra cash for an expensive food means
things like picking up a special bag of coffee or splurging on a pint of ice cream… even
though it's not on sale.
For others, the price tag on something just doesn't matter.
For that select group of people, the higher the price, the more in-demand it is.
That's true of everything from cars to food, so let's talk about some insanely expensive,
highly valuable foods you might never buy, at least not on any ordinary shopping trip.
Da Hong Pao
You might not think there's anything pricey about making yourself a cup of tea, but there's
one kind worth about 30 times its weight in gold.
A single gram of original Da Hong Pao tea costs about $1,400, and that means a single
pot of tea is going to set you back around $10,000.
While there's plenty of Da Hong Pao teas that are decently affordable, there's a very good
reason the original is so expensive.
Da Hong Pao teas come from a staggeringly beautiful area of southern China, and get
their distinctive flavor, in part, from the rain that waters the plants after running
through a limestone landscape.
All Da Hong Pao tea trees trace their lineage back to a single group of trees: the mother
trees.
The tea from those mother trees is the expensive stuff, and since there aren't too many left,
it's only going to get pricier.
Yubari King melons
The Yubari King is a type of melon native to the Yubari region of Japan.
They might look normal, but they sell for unbelievable prices.
In 2017, a perfect pair of melons sold for $30,300, and if you think that's insane, buckle
up.
We're just getting started.
Not all the Yubari King melons cost as much as a Dodge Durango, but they're just one part
of Japan's obsession with perfect fruit.
The nation's most expensive fruits aren't just fruit, they're luxury items, honored
gifts, and status symbols.
Creating the perfectly shaped, flavored, and textured fruit is incredibly labor-intensive,
and it's reflected in the prices.
Perfect strawberries can sell for around $4,000 each.
Bunches of Ruby Roman grapes usually go for around $880 a bunch, although the record-setter
there was a single bunch for $9,700.
That works out to around $320 a grape.
Saffron
When it comes to spices, saffron still reigns as the most expensive, with high-quality saffron
costing around $7.30 a gram.
Doesn't sound like much?
That means a pound of the stuff will set you back around $3,300.
That's a steep price tag, but let's consider it takes between 70,000 to 250,000 flowers
to make that pound of saffron, and it can only be harvested by hand.
Also, since crops only yield their full potential every three years, that means you're forking
over a mint.
Saffron has been in demand for a long time, and even ancient murals from Crete show what
seems to be a monkey trained to harvest saffron.
Why hasn't that continued?
Ayam cemani chickens
Ayam cemani chickens might be the coolest-looking chickens on the block, but you're going to
pay a pretty penny for adding a few of these birds to your flock.
Asking prices can climb to around $2,500 per bird, and it's not just because of their good
looks.
The chickens are completely black, from their feathers and skin to meat and bones.
Popular across Asia for at least 800 years, these unique-looking birds are thought to
have something of a mystic nature.
They're a part of some religious ceremonies, and they're particularly popular as a meal
for women who have just given birth, as it's said they give health benefits, a clear conscience,
and good luck to those who eat them.
Black Ivory Coffee
Remember when people were shocked by the price of coffee made from beans that had passed
through the digestive tract of a civet?
"Cope louet.
The rarest beverage in the world"
That was expensive, but it's nothing compared to elephant poop coffee.
This one's made from beans that have been fed to then passed through an elephant.
Since elephants are herbivores, there's a completely different taste to the coffee,
which is described as being a bit nutty.
You can order some to try yourself, if you're curious, but how much are you going to have
to shell out for this delicacy?
Around $1,000 for a pound of beans.
White truffles
The price of white truffles varies a lot, and a huge part of the fluctuation is based
on the weather's impact on the harvest.
A poor harvest in 2017 meant rising prices and scarcity, and white truffle prices soared
to $5,500 a kilo.
That was almost double the price of the previous year, and those are just restaurant-grade
truffles.
Sometimes, lucky truffle hunters stumble across something even better.
Bigger truffles bring even higher prices and in 2010, a single, 2-pound truffle sold for
$330,000 at auction.
Part of the reason for the consistently high price is they have to be found rather than
grown, and they're one of the few food crops that have consistently refused to be domesticated.
In the places they're found, they bring both the good and the bad.
In some of the towns that rely on the truffle crop, they're so revered Church masses are
said over them, but on the other hand, there's also a pretty shady industry growing up around
truffles.
They're stolen and sold, farmers are harassed, and the most successful truffle-hunting dogs
are at risk of being taken.
All over a fungus.
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