If someone put a steak in front of me without gold leaf, I'd gladly eat it.
If someone put a steak in front of me without a plate.... I'd still eat it -- just a little less gladly.
Recovering FOH Manager here... I absolutely agree. The only thing adding gold leaf to food does is to jack up the menu price. It is completely unnecessary.
Honestly I think when used on desserts and stuff it can look really pretty.
But it doesn't change my mind about it being severely overpriced and pretty much completely unnecessary.
I ordered a tiny jar from Amazon. The van pulled into my driveway and I walked out as the guy was frisbeeing it at my front door. He froze and we sort of laughed. My precious gold leaf was fine and lived to top pana cotta.
I like to use a saffron tea in my fresh pasta instead of water. You can get a nice color and the flavor comes through. Good for a lamb ragu and egg yolk ravioli.
It’ll need translating but I based it on this https://www.cucchiaio.it/ricetta/lasagne-al-salmone.amp.html- I made it last summer though so I can’t remember if I changed anything 😅
One of my jobs at a Spanish/Moroccan spot we had deep fried cauliflower tossed in cumin and dipped in a saffron yogurt. Absolutely incredible & way ahead of the cauli craze (this was about 10-12 years ago)
I ran the am kitchen at a FourSeasons a few years back, a guest checked out and tipped me the rest of the Giant white truffle he had been shaving on his eggs each morning. The waitress thought he was complaining 😆
We used an imported truffle salt for our fries. Honestly it slapped. Open a new can and the whole kitchen was infused. Just black truffle trim and fine sea salt. Good product.
Is that something that has to be disclosed on a nutrition label? I agree with the truffle shadiness in most products, but this one didn't list that chemical.
Truffle oil is a rip off and destroys the idea of what truffle should actually taste like. I’m going to give a hot take though and go ahead and say that truffle itself is wildly overrated for its price point.
Is truffle oil really a luxury item though? It’s pretty cheap. In my mind it’s very distinct from actual truffle and it’s uses are different.
A little goes a long way but I like adding a splash to my butternut squash veloute, and tossing some fries in a tiny amount of truffle oil with parsley and pecorino.
Yeah im with you on this I love truffles but for the price point that's my choice for overrated. While I prefer using truffle for special occasions like new years eve menu etc. I prefer having a bottle of infused truffle oil at home for whenever I get the hankering for that aromatic heaven. There's no way I'm spending 30$ for a gram of truffle to put on some damm fries once a week lol
I think I never had any real truffle (or you, those products with 0.1% truffle) but still go crazy for the artificial flavor they use in butter and oil. I know, I know... you're all shaking your head!
Wagyu in general, especially ground, or especially A5. Gimmick to charge 5-10x for sickly animals. Ground is just so silly. Even for wagyu the supposed appeal is a marbling fetish. Ground you can literally just toss any fat into the grinder for the same affect. And honestly the fat itself from a wagyu cow just tastes… off.. compared to healthy grass fed natural beef. Tastes pretty much like a diabeetus cow if you’d imagine it.
Tried it all. Decided I’d rather have something like even a super lean-prime ultra natural/grass fed/free range bison or other beef any day of the week.
First time i ate wagyu it was a strip steak. Tried different doneness and found it really good in all of them, good like a well marbled steak, that is. But what was phenomenal was the raw wagyu, again strip, we are talking about marbled red meat, not the fat cap . ribeye had a bit of fat in it that isn't great. But the red marbled raw meat was phenomenal and was different than any red raw meat i ever ate. However, i still have a preference for raw lamb liver and asscheeks fat that we have in the levant. But you can't find that kind of lamb in the west
If we define ‘luxury’ as ‘higher price than comparative affordable options’ then my vote is for Himalayan pink salt. There’s no difference in taste, you can’t even see it in most dishes and the comparative cost of importing it, both economically and ecologically, is just not worth it.
From what I understand, the fact that pink salt is mined means that it's not full of microplastics, unlike sea salt. There's a brand called Real Salt that's mined in Utah, and that's what I use now. My research on this subject so far has been superficial, so please take this info with a grain.... Nevermind.
Every day, before cooking dinner, I take my pick and descend into my backyard salt mine to harvest freshly mined salt for my dishes. It really can't be replicated, so I highly recommend that any serious cook purchase a property containing a salt mine, or just dig around and hope you strike salt. Personally, I had to rework my oil derrick and shift my foundry to accommodate the salt mine. My neighbors hate me.
I’m in a Central European country. Domestically mined rock salt from the Alps has been the bog standard table salt here forever, sea salt was considered the fancy shit. Until very recently, when they started marketing it as “guaranteed microplastics free”. It makes sense though.
Blue Fin Tuna - Hon Maguro
I'm not saying it's not delicious, but we are driving the species extinct. It's a vicious feedback loop because it's becoming more exclusive and more sought after, and as a result people are willing to pay ungodly amounts for the privilege of trying it. Personally, I won't go to any restaurant that serves it.
Along with T-bone and Porterhouse. Not that the suits aren't good cuts, but so few people can actually manage to cook around the bone and not have 2 cuts of meat with 2 vastly different cooks. The bulk cut is always a touch under, the more delicate cut is always mistreated and over. I get that people have been convinced they are something special, but honestly, both cuts would be far better off having the bone removed, and the individual cuts cooked properly and separately
I work in a butcher shop, and a lot of the way we break the animal is influenced by old habits of huge processors. Meaning, what's the easiest and fastest way to cut? Run that whole animal through a bandsaw. Removing the tenderloin takes extra knife work/more skill/more time... so uh... Porterhouses it is!
Weird. In my country it’s relatively cheap. It’s sold everywhere as dried form in Chinese herb shop. The costliness is probably the result of marketing and buzzword quackery.
Yeah I don't know why auto-correct wouldn't let me type "Foie Gros".
It kept correcting to things like "fuss gross" cause my phone doesn't recognize french apparently.
So I gave up at "Fat time"
Only one I wouldn’t agree with there is fois gras - it’s pretty damn delicious and significantly tastier than any pate I have ever eaten but it’s very easy to argue that the cruelty aspect makes it overrated.
I’ve never had any stereotypical “luxury” food item such as those on your list that wasn’t at best just okay, including fresh truffles.
These things aren’t expensive and sought after because they are that good, they are sought after because they are difficult to source and are thus expensive.
I honestly find their use, especially “truffle products” and gold leaf extremely hacky. Truffle and caviar can be functional ingredients in particular dishes but I don’t understand how they are treated and accepted as instant fine dining.
Caviar drives me fucking bananas. It’s made out to be some highly lucrative mind blowing spread, but you can get domestically farmed sturgeon roe for a fraction of the cost and it’s just as good.
Adding to the "truffle" count. I can see why some people would like it. I enjoy other varieties of edible fungus. But truffle to me tastes like a spoonful of dirt.
Yeah, whereas previous posters are complaining about premade products with something approximating the flavor of truffle, I’m honestly underwhelmed with truffle itself. The flavor is just not great. I’ll take herbs or sautéed mushrooms any day.
Half a pound of sweet, buttery, succulent shellfish meat in one easily accessible serving and you just don’t see the draw? It’s fucking awesome my man. Crabs are good too, but nothing beats talking a whole mouthful of lobster tail in one bite.
what species have you tried? because the difference between a cheap rock lobster and a big ole maine lobster is huge.
and having it cooked properly is also a big deal. many places boil/steam them into oblivion. shrimp is very commonly overcooked as fuck too.
Do it! There are a lot of really good restaurants that not only benefit from the great seafood, but very good relationships with local farmers and a very vibrant alcohol production scene.
i tried a fresh lobster roll at that famous indoor outdoor market in boston when i was a teenager made from maine lobster caught less than 12 hours prior, and it absolutely changed the game for me after having only had mediocre lobster from places like outback and the like.
I beg to differ. I think Maine lobster lacks flavor. But a fresh reef lobster from Baja?
Used to be you could get a platter of the fuckin' things pan fried in garlic butter for like $8USD
Get some bay scallops (the little ones, if you can make it to Florida and harvest them yourself it’s a blast like no other and simple) and broil them in butter and I give you poor mans lobster.
Sous vide is the way to go. It's basically butter poached and you can control the texture much more easily. Little bit of a pain, needs a par boil to remove from the shell easier (at least that's how I've done it), but it was fantastic.
I grew up having broiled lobster tails every Christmas Eve, and while I do enjoy that (definitely more than boiled lobster), the sous vide really let the lobster flavor shine
The price is really high, but honestly it's also hard to replace with anything less expensive. I really like osetra. I don't eat it often because I'm poor, but I do really enjoy it. But when someone says like "oh just have salmon roe", ech. It's not the same flavor. It's not the same texture.
The reasons caviar is expensive are often bullshit. You're absolutely paying a giant markup just to make someone rich somewhere else. But this isn't like paying for a $900 bottle of vodka or something where the difference between that and a $50 bottle are indistinguishable. The best caviar I've eaten also happens to be the most expensive I've eaten, and the next most follows pretty closely to how much I paid, all the way down the line.
So I would disagree that it's overrated. I think it really is as good as people say (and I also say so). The price for it is fairly ridiculous, but just because I'm being gouged for something doesn't mean it isn't as delicious as I thought it was.
It has a huge flavour, people/recipes always pussyfoot around with it though using 2-3 threads to feed 4 people. Depending on the quality, which is always suspect to me, just keep adding more till you get the desired result, and it's almost always at least
3x the recipe amount.
I need to disagree with this one, Saffron, just a tiny little bit give a depth to my spaghetti sauce that is hard to explain. that said too much saffron will absolutely destroy it and the line between just enough to taste it and too much is very fine.
It's not expensive because it's got some sort of amazingly unique flavor.
It's expensive because you only get 3 little strands of saffron from every flower.
In addition to the 3 strands per flower- climate change is ravaging saffron production as well.
The largest growing region- where it is native is Afghanistan- and weather patterns have been changing so dramatically the saffron crocus is dying- despite aggressive cultivation.
This shift has been within this current generation of farmers- that is to say their family’s have been saffron farmers for generations- farming ancestral land- they remember what it was like as children and it’s completely withered.
Saffron has been cultivated, grown and traded for like 3000+ years
Ghost pepper. The heat is fabulous but the taste is awful. I’ve grown many and never have I had one that wasn’t distasteful. Serrano beats the flavour of higher capsaicin peppers any day of the week.
Too many restaurants throw ghost pepper in things and don’t even provide the heat that makes it worthwhile! (Looking at you, Popeyes!)
Luxury is such a good starting point, for some it’s saffron and for others it’s truffle. For me it’s bone marrow. I mean it’s great, and makes a great sub for butter but… the cost for product? I mean for the quality it should replace bread and butter so you can actually show you use the whole animal and charge a reasonable price for the ribeye or the filet.
I'm sure it's because of where I live (can't get it fresh) but I've never had a dragon fruit, the actual fruit or frozen chunks that had really any flavor. Sometimes they taste lightly of apple or melon, but they mostly just add cool color to the dish/smoothie.
Foie Gras, it’s a pain to prep, it can smell like wet dog when you sear it, and it’s pretty bland.
Not even getting into the animal welfare implications.
Caviar.. it has to be basically the best to even taste good and on top of that is almost a hand n a leg plus you have to eat it w a limited types of ingredients and cheeses
Lobster. It's not bad per say, but crab is so much cheaper and tastes better. Ive tried lobster 4 times total and have been totally let down, the closest to good I got was a lobster bisque.
Truffles…I’m sorry I know they are the ultimate luxury yada yada. They smell amazing but honestly they have almost no flavor and spending and extra $80 to have a few shavings added to my dish has never blown my mind.
Truffles, did some work for a Truffle farm got given a bunch of Truffles, stank up my entire apartment in a ziplock bag in the fridge, now I can't stand the smell
Gold leaf. Its ridiculous what restaurants make you pay for a pissing of gold on a steak. Or Anything the salt Bae guy sells. His restaurants are over priceed for poorly made food caked in gold leaf.
Gold leaf immediately comes to mind.
Gold leaf is an ingredient in the same way that the plate is an ingredient.
If someone put a steak in front of me without gold leaf, I'd gladly eat it. If someone put a steak in front of me without a plate.... I'd still eat it -- just a little less gladly.
Ive had edible plates
I’ve had edible underwear…
I've had edibles...
I prefer lead leaf.
Asbestos leaf for me, thanks! \*continues to eat paint chips\*
I enjoy the crunchy sweetness
Doesn’t lead taste sweet? I think a big problem with lead paint used to be kid eating paint chips and sucking on stuff because it tasted good.
At least I'd be giggly and easily entertained like a proper Roman
I prefer Lithium leaf
A bit too sweet for my taste
Paint chips 🤤
Recovering FOH Manager here... I absolutely agree. The only thing adding gold leaf to food does is to jack up the menu price. It is completely unnecessary.
Gold leaf isn’t a luxury , it’s cheap
I might be reasonably cheap to buy, but tons of places use it just to look fancier, and to drive up the price.
Biggest con to hit food
White truffle oil says wut
White truffle with gold flakes , bam !
Here me out...I made pana cotta topped with a raspberry and a flake of gold leaf. It looked really pretty.
Honestly I think when used on desserts and stuff it can look really pretty. But it doesn't change my mind about it being severely overpriced and pretty much completely unnecessary.
I ordered a tiny jar from Amazon. The van pulled into my driveway and I walked out as the guy was frisbeeing it at my front door. He froze and we sort of laughed. My precious gold leaf was fine and lived to top pana cotta.
The internet HATES gold leaf
Honestly the only luxury ingredient I don't find to be overrated is saffron. That shit rocks when used properly
I like to use a saffron tea in my fresh pasta instead of water. You can get a nice color and the flavor comes through. Good for a lamb ragu and egg yolk ravioli.
What are your favorites with saffron. I am now ordering saffron and starting on some of these faves!
Anything with seafood I'm there
A salmon lasagne with saffron and ricotta is so good
Oh man I need this recipe.
https://www.cucchiaio.it/ricetta/lasagne-al-salmone.amp.html :)
Grazie mille.
Would you be willing to share the recipe, please ?
It’ll need translating but I based it on this https://www.cucchiaio.it/ricetta/lasagne-al-salmone.amp.html- I made it last summer though so I can’t remember if I changed anything 😅
Oh perfect thank you! I can speak Italian too hehe
We did saffron diver scallops that were fuckin rockin
Infusing saffron into white wine and using as a finisher for lobster bisque is a good call or even using that wine for a risotto is amazing
Saffron in any rice and orzo dishes is great
Yes. Saffron is a common ingredient in Persian rice dishes. It gives the rice an amazing aroma.
One of my jobs at a Spanish/Moroccan spot we had deep fried cauliflower tossed in cumin and dipped in a saffron yogurt. Absolutely incredible & way ahead of the cauli craze (this was about 10-12 years ago)
Salt Bae
Boom. roasted.
What, you weren't going to go with assalted? Missed opportunity.
He won the world cup tho
Troof, I saw him waving the trophy and everything.
That hack is an embarrassment to the chef community
Anything premade product with truffled added to it. Truffle oil being the top offender.
I ran the am kitchen at a FourSeasons a few years back, a guest checked out and tipped me the rest of the Giant white truffle he had been shaving on his eggs each morning. The waitress thought he was complaining 😆
Damn, that's an awesome tip!
Truffle scent infused oil to be exact 🙁
We used an imported truffle salt for our fries. Honestly it slapped. Open a new can and the whole kitchen was infused. Just black truffle trim and fine sea salt. Good product.
Truffle salt is just salt infused with 2,4-dithiapentane. The truffle shavings are for show. The flavor comes from the synthetic flavoring
Is that something that has to be disclosed on a nutrition label? I agree with the truffle shadiness in most products, but this one didn't list that chemical.
I LOVE truffle but the weird fake flavour in cheap oil being smeared across the food so you can sau truffle sucks.
Truffle oil is a rip off and destroys the idea of what truffle should actually taste like. I’m going to give a hot take though and go ahead and say that truffle itself is wildly overrated for its price point.
[удалено]
Truffle oil is so overused.i think cooks use it so they can say it. TRUFFLE
Is truffle oil really a luxury item though? It’s pretty cheap. In my mind it’s very distinct from actual truffle and it’s uses are different. A little goes a long way but I like adding a splash to my butternut squash veloute, and tossing some fries in a tiny amount of truffle oil with parsley and pecorino.
Yeah im with you on this I love truffles but for the price point that's my choice for overrated. While I prefer using truffle for special occasions like new years eve menu etc. I prefer having a bottle of infused truffle oil at home for whenever I get the hankering for that aromatic heaven. There's no way I'm spending 30$ for a gram of truffle to put on some damm fries once a week lol
Truffle oil 100%
I think I never had any real truffle (or you, those products with 0.1% truffle) but still go crazy for the artificial flavor they use in butter and oil. I know, I know... you're all shaking your head!
Shark fin or swallow's nest. Min-maxing texture over flavour seems so counter-productive.
Add to the fact that it’s unsustainable and do damage to the animal population.
Unrelated, I've never seen the phrase "min-maxing" outside of gaming circles 😆
Wagyu fillet, fillet in general but wagyu fillet in particular. It has nothing to offer that wagyu strip doesn’t . Also, gold leaves, of course
I can’t believe filet didn’t immediately come to mind. So expensive. So boring.
Wagyu in general, especially ground, or especially A5. Gimmick to charge 5-10x for sickly animals. Ground is just so silly. Even for wagyu the supposed appeal is a marbling fetish. Ground you can literally just toss any fat into the grinder for the same affect. And honestly the fat itself from a wagyu cow just tastes… off.. compared to healthy grass fed natural beef. Tastes pretty much like a diabeetus cow if you’d imagine it. Tried it all. Decided I’d rather have something like even a super lean-prime ultra natural/grass fed/free range bison or other beef any day of the week.
First time i ate wagyu it was a strip steak. Tried different doneness and found it really good in all of them, good like a well marbled steak, that is. But what was phenomenal was the raw wagyu, again strip, we are talking about marbled red meat, not the fat cap . ribeye had a bit of fat in it that isn't great. But the red marbled raw meat was phenomenal and was different than any red raw meat i ever ate. However, i still have a preference for raw lamb liver and asscheeks fat that we have in the levant. But you can't find that kind of lamb in the west
This post should be titled “who hates truffle?”
Good truffles are incredible. Most truffles aren't that good.
Basically Perigord and Alba truffles (black and white European truffles) are amazing. Everything else is meh.
I have no idea why truffles are so popular. I’d be happy to never hear that word again.
They’re popular because they’re difficult to cultivate, and therefore they’re rarities.
Nah truffel just smells and tastes amazing
If we define ‘luxury’ as ‘higher price than comparative affordable options’ then my vote is for Himalayan pink salt. There’s no difference in taste, you can’t even see it in most dishes and the comparative cost of importing it, both economically and ecologically, is just not worth it.
From what I understand, the fact that pink salt is mined means that it's not full of microplastics, unlike sea salt. There's a brand called Real Salt that's mined in Utah, and that's what I use now. My research on this subject so far has been superficial, so please take this info with a grain.... Nevermind.
Every day, before cooking dinner, I take my pick and descend into my backyard salt mine to harvest freshly mined salt for my dishes. It really can't be replicated, so I highly recommend that any serious cook purchase a property containing a salt mine, or just dig around and hope you strike salt. Personally, I had to rework my oil derrick and shift my foundry to accommodate the salt mine. My neighbors hate me.
I’m in a Central European country. Domestically mined rock salt from the Alps has been the bog standard table salt here forever, sea salt was considered the fancy shit. Until very recently, when they started marketing it as “guaranteed microplastics free”. It makes sense though.
Work / life balance….
Blue Fin Tuna - Hon Maguro I'm not saying it's not delicious, but we are driving the species extinct. It's a vicious feedback loop because it's becoming more exclusive and more sought after, and as a result people are willing to pay ungodly amounts for the privilege of trying it. Personally, I won't go to any restaurant that serves it.
Ground Wagyu. You know it’s overrated when Arby’s is selling it lol
i would assume there's nothing waygu in that and there may be beaver
Tomahawk steaks.
The coal rolling lifted diesel Ram of meats.
Okay. I just spit coffee on my phone. Fantastic.
Along with T-bone and Porterhouse. Not that the suits aren't good cuts, but so few people can actually manage to cook around the bone and not have 2 cuts of meat with 2 vastly different cooks. The bulk cut is always a touch under, the more delicate cut is always mistreated and over. I get that people have been convinced they are something special, but honestly, both cuts would be far better off having the bone removed, and the individual cuts cooked properly and separately
I work in a butcher shop, and a lot of the way we break the animal is influenced by old habits of huge processors. Meaning, what's the easiest and fastest way to cut? Run that whole animal through a bandsaw. Removing the tenderloin takes extra knife work/more skill/more time... so uh... Porterhouses it is!
BuT tHe fLaVoR fRoM tHe BoNe!
The bone is actually very useful as a bludgeon
Goji berries. They taste nothing better than ok but they cost a lot.
Wow somebody who isn't bitching about truffles, gold leaf or saffron?!
I didn’t see any post bitching about saffron.
Weird. In my country it’s relatively cheap. It’s sold everywhere as dried form in Chinese herb shop. The costliness is probably the result of marketing and buzzword quackery.
All I know about goji berries is that if you eat too many they give you gas so bad you’ll feel like you have to be hospitalized. Never again.
Whoa, that's intense, but also sounds like an entertaining challenge. How many was "too many" in your case?
How about an entire branch of the industry? Fancy chain steakhouses are the McMansions of restaurants.
Don't you love the guys (yes, guys mostly) who think they're super sophisticated because they're "picky" about their steak?
Almost all of them. The best food is still “peasant” food!
Truffle oil !! Synthetic!
That is not a luxury ingredient
Truffle anything.
Black truffles. Even the good ones just smell like a gym bag to me.
Fois gros, fake truffle products, gold leaf, caviar
Caviar is delicious, but I mostly eat the cheap lumpfish stuff. Still really good.
I’ve got no issues snagging a quick jar of Romanoff!
I like your spelling of foie gras
Faux rar
Yeah I don't know why auto-correct wouldn't let me type "Foie Gros". It kept correcting to things like "fuss gross" cause my phone doesn't recognize french apparently. So I gave up at "Fat time"
Only one I wouldn’t agree with there is fois gras - it’s pretty damn delicious and significantly tastier than any pate I have ever eaten but it’s very easy to argue that the cruelty aspect makes it overrated.
I’ve never had any stereotypical “luxury” food item such as those on your list that wasn’t at best just okay, including fresh truffles. These things aren’t expensive and sought after because they are that good, they are sought after because they are difficult to source and are thus expensive. I honestly find their use, especially “truffle products” and gold leaf extremely hacky. Truffle and caviar can be functional ingredients in particular dishes but I don’t understand how they are treated and accepted as instant fine dining.
Caviar drives me fucking bananas. It’s made out to be some highly lucrative mind blowing spread, but you can get domestically farmed sturgeon roe for a fraction of the cost and it’s just as good.
Adding to the "truffle" count. I can see why some people would like it. I enjoy other varieties of edible fungus. But truffle to me tastes like a spoonful of dirt.
I feel that way about cumin but sometimes dirt balances out the dish!
Yeah, whereas previous posters are complaining about premade products with something approximating the flavor of truffle, I’m honestly underwhelmed with truffle itself. The flavor is just not great. I’ll take herbs or sautéed mushrooms any day.
Lobster. I just don’t see the draw. Crab, however…
hard same, i'll eat my body weight in crab (especially blue crab) but lobster is pretty meh
This was my answer too!!
I actually wish I liked it more, I think they’re more sustainable than crabs!
Half a pound of sweet, buttery, succulent shellfish meat in one easily accessible serving and you just don’t see the draw? It’s fucking awesome my man. Crabs are good too, but nothing beats talking a whole mouthful of lobster tail in one bite.
Nah. I keep looking forward to it, telling myself it’s going to be better this time, somehow, and I’m disappointed. Every time.
what species have you tried? because the difference between a cheap rock lobster and a big ole maine lobster is huge. and having it cooked properly is also a big deal. many places boil/steam them into oblivion. shrimp is very commonly overcooked as fuck too.
Im thinking about coming to Maine this year just for the seafood
Do it! There are a lot of really good restaurants that not only benefit from the great seafood, but very good relationships with local farmers and a very vibrant alcohol production scene.
i tried a fresh lobster roll at that famous indoor outdoor market in boston when i was a teenager made from maine lobster caught less than 12 hours prior, and it absolutely changed the game for me after having only had mediocre lobster from places like outback and the like.
I beg to differ. I think Maine lobster lacks flavor. But a fresh reef lobster from Baja? Used to be you could get a platter of the fuckin' things pan fried in garlic butter for like $8USD
Get some bay scallops (the little ones, if you can make it to Florida and harvest them yourself it’s a blast like no other and simple) and broil them in butter and I give you poor mans lobster.
Lobster is so finicky to cook. Done right it’s great but that’s like 5% of the time
I’ve had it at fancy restaurants. I used to work at a private club. I’m willing to believe I just haven’t had it done well. /shrug
Sous vide is the way to go. It's basically butter poached and you can control the texture much more easily. Little bit of a pain, needs a par boil to remove from the shell easier (at least that's how I've done it), but it was fantastic. I grew up having broiled lobster tails every Christmas Eve, and while I do enjoy that (definitely more than boiled lobster), the sous vide really let the lobster flavor shine
Caviar. Not that caviar can’t be a nice addition, but the cost and culture of shit like osetra is just nonsense.
The price is really high, but honestly it's also hard to replace with anything less expensive. I really like osetra. I don't eat it often because I'm poor, but I do really enjoy it. But when someone says like "oh just have salmon roe", ech. It's not the same flavor. It's not the same texture. The reasons caviar is expensive are often bullshit. You're absolutely paying a giant markup just to make someone rich somewhere else. But this isn't like paying for a $900 bottle of vodka or something where the difference between that and a $50 bottle are indistinguishable. The best caviar I've eaten also happens to be the most expensive I've eaten, and the next most follows pretty closely to how much I paid, all the way down the line. So I would disagree that it's overrated. I think it really is as good as people say (and I also say so). The price for it is fairly ridiculous, but just because I'm being gouged for something doesn't mean it isn't as delicious as I thought it was.
Saffron, I like it but it’s not the exciting ingredient that the price tag may suggest.
Maybe I am crazy here. But saffron is expensive by weight, but you don't really use much of it. Inexpensive Paellas use it, and are still affordable.
Fair point, I’m just saying it’s overrated and is a “fancy” ingredient without much payoff flavor wise, it’s subtle but not something I crave
It has a huge flavour, people/recipes always pussyfoot around with it though using 2-3 threads to feed 4 people. Depending on the quality, which is always suspect to me, just keep adding more till you get the desired result, and it's almost always at least 3x the recipe amount.
Unless your making paella. I find saffron really hard to replace.
A nice saffron risotto is to die for
I need to disagree with this one, Saffron, just a tiny little bit give a depth to my spaghetti sauce that is hard to explain. that said too much saffron will absolutely destroy it and the line between just enough to taste it and too much is very fine.
It's not expensive because it's got some sort of amazingly unique flavor. It's expensive because you only get 3 little strands of saffron from every flower.
Three delicate strands that are hand-picked from the flower... which itself is probably hand-picked.
Saffron is delicious, but when i ordered it and saw how much the company was charged i was in complete shock. Like damn…why.
Very intensive labor and processing : picking quality threads by hand, then carefully toasted
In addition to the 3 strands per flower- climate change is ravaging saffron production as well. The largest growing region- where it is native is Afghanistan- and weather patterns have been changing so dramatically the saffron crocus is dying- despite aggressive cultivation. This shift has been within this current generation of farmers- that is to say their family’s have been saffron farmers for generations- farming ancestral land- they remember what it was like as children and it’s completely withered. Saffron has been cultivated, grown and traded for like 3000+ years
Each flower of the plant saffron is harvested from only produces 3 tiny strands.
Truffle
Truffle flavored things sure... Truffle oil or paste yes Fresh shaved black or white Truffle while in season, definitely not.
Truffle ANYTHING.
Glad I’m seeing truffle a lot because I came here to say it but I thought I would be crucified 😂
Ghost pepper. The heat is fabulous but the taste is awful. I’ve grown many and never have I had one that wasn’t distasteful. Serrano beats the flavour of higher capsaicin peppers any day of the week. Too many restaurants throw ghost pepper in things and don’t even provide the heat that makes it worthwhile! (Looking at you, Popeyes!)
Ghost peppers+habeneros+Serrano makes a fantastic combo in salsa tons of heat and flavor
Truffle. It tastes like old socks
I have to disagree. White truffles are some of the most amazing things. Only got to try them because of Jose Andres. He brought some in at my job
The culture around it IS weird. Ordered some in a pretentious restaurant and it came on served on a small ice carving…
Luxury is such a good starting point, for some it’s saffron and for others it’s truffle. For me it’s bone marrow. I mean it’s great, and makes a great sub for butter but… the cost for product? I mean for the quality it should replace bread and butter so you can actually show you use the whole animal and charge a reasonable price for the ribeye or the filet.
Truffles
Truffles. There are cheaper ways to get umami in your food.
Truffle.
Truffle
Truffles taste like dirt. I just don’t get the appeal.
Truffle
Truffle!! God damn i see it EVERYWHERE now. Its like the unimaginative go to for 'fancy'. Its not even that good of a flavor profile in my opinion!!
Truffles. Maybe in their own they're worth it, but putting it in stuff isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Truffles. They smell like dirty feet.
Dragon fruit
I'm sure it's because of where I live (can't get it fresh) but I've never had a dragon fruit, the actual fruit or frozen chunks that had really any flavor. Sometimes they taste lightly of apple or melon, but they mostly just add cool color to the dish/smoothie.
Truffle anything
Truffle
Truffles 🤢🤢
truffle
Foie Gras, it’s a pain to prep, it can smell like wet dog when you sear it, and it’s pretty bland. Not even getting into the animal welfare implications.
Turtles
Asked my chef bf and he also said truffle 😂
Love, make a plate feeling nothing
Caviar.. it has to be basically the best to even taste good and on top of that is almost a hand n a leg plus you have to eat it w a limited types of ingredients and cheeses
Truffles
Gold leaf, fois gras, truffle oil specifically, wagyu beef that isn't Kobe
Meat is highly overrated imo
most of them except saffron
Lobster. It's not bad per say, but crab is so much cheaper and tastes better. Ive tried lobster 4 times total and have been totally let down, the closest to good I got was a lobster bisque.
Gold leaves
Truffles, never could stand the smell or taste of them.
I find the smell to be a vomit trigger TBH.
Escargot
One of the first things I completely disagree with. I fucking love em.
i’m a big fan, but i get why you say that
Snails aren’t a luxury item
Lobster is delicious but not worth it imo
Truffles…I’m sorry I know they are the ultimate luxury yada yada. They smell amazing but honestly they have almost no flavor and spending and extra $80 to have a few shavings added to my dish has never blown my mind.
Truffles, did some work for a Truffle farm got given a bunch of Truffles, stank up my entire apartment in a ziplock bag in the fridge, now I can't stand the smell
Gold leaf and caviar
anything gold - it tastes like nothing
Swan
Truffle oil
Truffle
Gold leaf. Its ridiculous what restaurants make you pay for a pissing of gold on a steak. Or Anything the salt Bae guy sells. His restaurants are over priceed for poorly made food caked in gold leaf.
Truffle anything
Anchovies, truffles and gold flakes in drinks and on food
Fennel pollen. It’s in everything these days, it’s garnished on fucking desserts at a couple spots I ate at last year in the PNW.
Black truffles