Caviar has become the Costco rotisserie chicken of fine dining

The gleaming black-and-gold dining room at Coqodac is rowdy, and it isn’t even open for dinner yet. A table of “rappers and podcast hosts” are lingering over a late $4,000 caviar-and-champagne lunch, executive chef Seung Kyu Kim says. He doesn’t mind — he wants his Manhattan restaurant, notorious for its caviar-topped chicken nuggets ($28 per nugget), to be a place people come to celebrate. As bird flu forces U.S. stores to ration $10-a-dozen chicken eggs, salt-cured fish eggs have become inescapable at high-end restaurants. The slimy, briny spheres can now be found atop $68 sour-cream-and-onion dips in Nashville and $73 egg salads in San Francisco. But while customer perception of caviar as a luxury worth shelling out for has remained remarkably resilient for over a century, the wholesale cost of caviar — specifically, the roe from sturgeon — has dropped considerably in the past few years. The economics of excess: Chinese production drives prices down “There’s a caviar craze and each time someone asks me why, I tell them the same thing: an influx of mass-produced Chinese caviar at super low prices,” said Edward Panchernikov, director of operations at Caviar Russe, a caviar restaurant in New York. Wild-caught caviar is illegal under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Russian caviar, which accounts for a small percentage of the global supply, is under U.S. sanctions. Today most caviar imported by the U.S. is farmed in China, where low labor costs, abundant waterways and government support have helped push down prices. Accurate data is scarce — caviar makes up a small fraction of commodity imports — but the average price for a kilogram of imported caviar in the U.S. was around $240 in 2020, down from about $440 in 2014, according to the European Market Observatory for Fisheries and Aquaculture Products. China has endured multiple food-safety scandals in recent years, as well as accusations of unfairly competing on price; importers say this has tainted public perception of its caviar industry. But the scale of Chinese aquaculture means there is enormous range in the quality of caviar it sells, even within the same sturgeon farm. The same way top vineyards can produce grapes for the most coveted wines and sell the rest for bottom-shelf grocery store bottles, the same farm can produce the finest osetra fought over by Michelin restaurants to low-grade caviar sold downmarket for cheap. Indeed, the price of Chinese caviar can range dramatically — chefs quoted wholesale prices (including markups by importers) from $500 to $1,500 per kilogram, and retailers say it can go as low as $400. Price pressures across the market mean it can be very difficult for smaller domestic caviar farms to compete. (Marshallberg Farm, a U.S. producer that supplies caviar to the Plaza Hotel, said its break-even cost to produce a kilogram of caviar is $1,000 to $1,200.) Chefs note that some of the most expensive and desirable sturgeon roe in the world is coming from China. “The consistency, the flavor, and the salinity is very, very on point,” said Kim at Coqodaq. And, crucially, chefs can be more generous with their portions, creating an air of indulgence. From Caspian to Qiandao: China's dominance in global sturgeon farming The Modern, a two-Michelin-star Danny Meyer restaurant in midtown Manhattan, serves a caviar hot dog on its bar menu: two cocktail wieners, each blanketed in about four grams of Chinese-farmed golden osetra caviar, on mini brioche buns for $39. Bangkok Supper Club in the West Village tops its uni and crab tartlet with the same variety, a one-bite dish for $22. If caviar is cheaper now, why are diners still paying a premium? Part of the answer is that customers still perceive it as a luxury, and education about varying quality has lagged the market. “Consumers aren’t thinking about it too much,” says Lianne Won, co-owner of Marshallberg Farm. “They’re thinking OK, it’s caviar. Of course it’s expensive. They’re not thinking about where it comes from.” Perception vs. reality: The marketing challenge of Chinese caviar And despite the ascendency of Chinese caviar, when selling directly to customers, many importers still prefer not to specify country of origin. Retailer websites will claim the caviar was harvested in the immaculately clean waters of the Thousand Islands Lake, but never mention China. (China’s Qiandao Lake, which translates to “thousand islands” is where Kaluga Queen, the world’s largest supplier of caviar, is based.) “There is still some prejudice,” said Hossein Aimani, the head of Paramount Caviar, who supplies Chinese caviar to restaurants such as Le Bernardin in New York. Snobbery about provenance as a way to drive demand, and prices, is also a sacred tradition, as old as the caviar trade itself. In the 19th century, when the American sturgeon supply was abundant, the only caviar said to be worth paying top dollar for was from the Caspian Sea. American bars put domestic caviar out for free like nuts, while industrious exporters to Europe pretended their supply was Caspian, Richard Carey wrote in his 2005 caviar history, The Philosopher Fish: Sturgeon, Caviar, and the Geography of Desire. But while caviar is having a moment, caviar in abundance, and increasingly downmarket, could threaten the industry itself. The luxurious and rare history of sturgeon roe is “under attack a bit,” said Panchernikov of Caviar Russe. “People are trying to pedestrianize it, and rid caviar of that specialness.” Menu prices stay high not just because dealers still make good margins but because — as with all things luxury — the price is the point. “Affordable caviar is oxymoronic,” said David Stephen, an aquaculture scientist and caviar industry consultant. The Costco strategy: Using Chinese caviar as restaurant loss leader The roe’s true power for chefs is less about its cost than its ability to titillate. When New York’s Temple Bar started offering $20 caviar “bumps” in late 2021, they got attention “not because they were serving caviar, but because they were doing them as bumps, making fun of it,” said Rachel Harrison, a longtime hospitality industry publicist. It made customers laugh; they took pictures for social media, which brought in more customers. For $20, it felt more like ordering another drink than splashing out $200 for a caviar service. Thomas Allen, the chef at The Modern, says the role of its caviar-topped hot dog is to capitalize on the ingredient’s ability to generate customer excitement, not margins. They make the cost up elsewhere, on alcohol or dessert. “The hot dog is like a feel-good moment that makes you smile,” he said. “Chances are you’re not just going to order that, you’re going to order other things. You’re going to order some wine.” Rather than being a cash cow, “It’s more like our Costco rotisserie chicken,” Allen said, referencing the retailer’s famously inflation-proof $4.99 product. Beyond tradition: How Chinese caviar enables culinary experimentation Chef Max Wittawat at Bangkok Supper Club calls the uni tartlet a “hero dish.” The restaurant isn’t making much margin on it, but it drives foot traffic, looks good on social media and — because it won’t fill you up — increases spend per customer. “China has made caviar more affordable for everyone. But at the restaurant, customers still appreciate it, they still see caviar as a luxury,” he said. Similarly Coqodac’s chef knows people won’t order one chicken nugget and call it dinner, so he keeps the price in (relative) bounds while using fine caviar, and almost everyone wants to order one. “We’re not really making money out of this. This is just to bring excitement,” Kim said. “It’s about sustainability.” The appeal of caviar has always been that it’s a little outrageous. Like great champagne, the cost, the history and the sheer fiscal irresponsibility has always been an erotic undercurrent beneath its culinary appeal, the reason we reach for it when the occasion feels special. But now that caviar is no longer so rare, chefs are playing with it, treating it like it’s just another ingredient, albeit one with low labor costs (they only need to open a tin). And in the case of an economic downturn, they need dishes that can draw in customers and drive spending with prices that aren’t totally out of reach. Still, the relative affordability of high-quality caviar could soon change as tariffs on China hit importers, while scaled-up Chinese aquaculture threatens to push supply of mid-tier caviar above what the market can bear. “I hope there’s not going to be a glut, but there is a lot of caviar in the market right now,” Aimani said. It is likely, he said, that more restaurants will start buying up lower quality, cheaper caviar to bridge the gap. In the meantime, caviar remains ubiquitous. “Caviar has been pigeonholed by society as a luxury ingredient,” said Mike Bagale, executive chef of New York restaurant Sip & Guzzle. “I try to serve it almost at cost. I don’t want to buy into the idea of overcharging for a commodity that costs a lot, serving it in small amounts.” He serves it in a koji cool ranch “party dip” with puffed chicken skin ($125). The relative affordability of caviar today means he can be generous. “They’re fish eggs. It doesn’t have to be super embellished or dainty or tweezered onto fish filets at a fine dining restaurant anymore,” said Bagale. He serves Greek caviar on ice cream, $70 for 10 grams. “At the end of the day, it’s salt.” By Madison Darbyshire

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Caviar has become the Costco rotisserie chicken of fine dining