Huh? Is it really this expensive?

Forget all the types of caviar you know, forget truffles, forget gold leaf… There is still so much other food you can use to show that you have money.  We collected six ingredients you wouldn’t expect to be this expensive.

Last week, two Japanese Yubari melons sold for over €25,000. They are so popular that people try to recreate the melons. If you really want to serve your guests a luxurious meal, use these ingredients, along with those Yubari melons you just managed to get your hands on, of course.

Moose milk cheese

Accidentally racking up a fortune after walking into the cheesemonger’s hungry is nothing new for us. Fortunately, we don’t live in the north of Sweden, where they make very expensive cheese from moose milk. Milk from three specific moose, in fact. Meet Gullan, Haelga and Juna. These three ensure that pieces of moose cheese are sold for €750 per kilo. Partly because it takes two hours to milk a moose and you don’t even get four litres of milk afterward, but also because you can only milk the moose between May and September.

Buddha-shaped pears

Yes, really. According to legend, eating fruit in the shape of Buddha (see photo above) would grant immortality. In that case, ten euros for a pear doesn’t sound so crazy after all.

Tie Guan Yin tea

Tie guan yin tea is a Chinese oolong tea that can cost more than €2,550 per kilo. The tea, named after the Buddhist goddess of mercy, Guanyin, can be brewed again and again without losing its flavour. That’s convenient, otherwise you’d get through that expensive kilo in no time.

It carries such a hefty price tag because the leaves can only be picked on the highest mountain in Fujin, China, and because processing the tea leaves requires a great deal of patience and precision. There you are, with your cup of Pickwick.

Loewak coffee

Even your daily mug of coffee can be much more expensive. You thought you’d spent enough money by buying an ultra-luxurious Nespresso? Think again. Kopi Loewak is what you want if you really want to splurge. The Loewak is a civet-like animal that eats the coffee cherries from the plantation. What happens to digested food? You poop it out. The Loewak does too. And that, dear people, is the secret to delicious Loewak coffee.

The coffee beans that have been excreted are washed, dried, peeled and roasted. Because the beans are difficult to find, Loewak coffee is highly exclusive and therefore expensive. Only two hundred kilos are produced per year. Per kilo, the black gold costs between €150 and €550.

Pineapples from ‘The Lost Gardens of Heligan’

Pineapples require a great deal of attention, patience and love during the growing process. In the Lost Gardens of Heligan, in Great Britain, they therefore cost a whopping €1,140. The irony of this price lies in the fact that the pineapples are much smaller than the average pineapple and are heated with horse manure during the growing process. Lovely. Although Heligan itself says it does not want to sell the pineapples, it does not rule out a possible charity auction. The expected auction value would then be as much as €11,400.