Every now and then, Australian restaurant Bennelong serves a limited-edition, super-swanky sausage roll priced at around $25 AUD ($16/£13). What makes it so special? The premium ingredients, of course. To make it, suckling pig meat is slow cooked at a low temperature for 10 hours, before being pulled apart and mixed with the finest herbs and vegetables. To give it that five-star edge, it’s cut into six bite-sized pieces, and each one is served with a touch of fermented black garlic. 

How much is too much for a chicken nugget? New York restaurant COQODAQ serves individual chicken nuggets with a hefty price tag of $28 (£22) each. Set up by Korean American restaurateur Simon Kim, whose steak restaurant COTE New York has a Michelin star, this luxury joint dishes up its nuggets with a dollop of Golden Daurenki caviar on top. If you think that’s a bit too steep, the restaurant also offers individual nuggets topped with ocean trout roe for $16 (£13) each.

A hot dog less ordinary (but not the most expensive on our list), this fancy number from New York City restaurant Mischa was made by cooking brisket and pork sausage in beef fat, griddling to perfection, then slipping the whole lot into a homemade potato bun. In a nod to sophistication, toppings – which included dry-aged beef chilli, homemade pickle relish, whipped pimento cheese and a bacon crisp – were presented alongside the gourmet dog, rather than piled on top. It was priced at a whopping $29 (£23). Sadly, Mischa shuttered in early 2024, less than a year after opening.

Grill 'n' Shake took everyone's favourite diner drink to a whole new level in 2015, launching the Millionaire’s Milkshake, priced at £50 (around £66/$83 in today's money). The restaurant, which has since closed, packed the shake with rich Jersey milk, saffron strands and ice cream made using Tahitian vanilla pods. It was topped off with 23-carat edible gold leaf sprinkles, black truffle shavings and Italian Amedei chocolate (some of the most expensive chocolate in the world).

The DougieDog Diner Truck made headlines when it unveiled its luxurious Dragon Dog in 2012. The foot-long bratwurst was made from Kobe beef that had been seared in truffle oil and infused with 100-year-old Louis XII Cognac. To really up the wow factor, it was served with fresh lobster sprinkled on top. At the time it sold for a whopping $100 CAD – a staggering $132 CAD ($97/£77) in today's money.

A world away from its usual incarnation as a grab-and-go fast food favourite, this fine dining riff on a classic Philadelphia cheesesteak features Wagyu ribeye steak, foie gras, onions and truffled cheese, all piled onto a freshly baked sesame roll. It’ll set you back $140 (£111) at Philly eatery Barclay Prime (though you do get half a bottle of Champagne with your order, too). 

How do you like your French fries? How about dipped in Dom Pérignon Champagne, triple-cooked in pure goose fat and finished off with artisan Italian cheese, three types of truffle and a dusting of gold? This extravagant combo is exactly what you'll find on offer at Serendipity3 in New York City. Named on the menu as The World's Most Expensive Fries, the dish earned the restaurant a Guinness World Record, and will set you back around $200 (£159). 

Somehow, New York City's Serendipity3 has even managed to turn the humble grilled cheese sandwich into a luxury menu item. Its Quintessential Grilled Cheese contains rare caciocavallo podolico cheese and truffle butter, layered between two slices of French pullman Champagne bread – which is made with (you guessed it) Dom Pérignon Champagne, plus edible gold flakes. The sandwich comes in at a cool $214 (£170). 

Forget the standard one-dollar hot dog sold from street-food stalls and carts. Back in 2014, for a massive $169 you could buy the Juuni Ban from Tokyo Dog, a food truck in Seattle, Washington. Today that works out to about $225 (£179) for a single hot dog. The foot-long feast featured a smoked cheese bratwurst, teriyaki grilled onions, maitake mushrooms, Wagyu beef, foie gras, shaved black truffles, caviar and Japanese mayo, all packed into a brioche bun. It did, however, need to be ordered two weeks in advance. 

Billion Dollar Popcorn doesn't actually cost a billion, but at $250 (£199) per gallon tin, this is one for special occasions (if you're actually nominated for an Oscar, perhaps, rather than just watching the ceremony). Made by Berco’s Popcorn in Chicago, Illinois, the very fancy snack is flavoured with a sugar-based caramel, Vermont Creamery’s precious butter, Nielsen-Massey Bourbon Vanilla and the world’s most expensive salt (from the island of Læsø), and comes topped off with 23-carat edible gold flakes. You can even buy one kernel for $5 (£4). 

There's one food pairing that renowned American celebrity chef David Chang can’t get enough of: fried chicken and caviar. It’s a celebrated dish that’s graced the menu of his New York restaurant, Momofuku Noodle Bar (in East Village), since 2016, and it remains a popular order. Priced at $600 (£477), it serves two to four people – and it features two battered, fried whole chickens, served with Platinum Osetra caviar, chive crepes, crème fraîche, white BBQ sauce and crisps. 

Opulence is certainly the order of the day at Serendipity3. Among the NYC restaurant’s crazily expensive offerings is the Golden Opulence Sundae, which sells for $1,000 (£795) and broke the world record for 'most expensive ice cream sundae' when it was released in 2004. It features Tahitian vanilla ice cream, almonds, caviar and a bespoke sugar ornament that takes eight hours to create (unsurprisingly, it has to be ordered by special request).

In October 2017, for a limited time, Westin New York at Times Square introduced a flashy new menu item: a $1,000 bagel. In today’s money, that comes in at an astounding $1,266 (£1,007). Needless to say, this wasn’t just any old bagel. It was made at a local bakery and served smothered with white truffle cream cheese, goji berry Riesling jelly and a good sprinkling of gold flakes. Profits from the sandwich were put towards the city's Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen, an emergency food aid programme. 

With a luxurious squid ink base, Industry Kitchen’s sparkly, glitzy pizza comes complete with some globe-trotting toppings – truffles from France, white Stilton cheese from the UK and dollops of Osetra caviar from the Caspian Sea – plus foie gras and 24-carat gold leaves. This piece of edible food art costs $2,000 (£1,591), but you can bump the price up further to $2,700 (£2,148) by adding Almas caviar.

Breaking the record for the world's most expensive burger, the Golden Boy was created by Dutch chef and 'King of Burgers' Robert Jan de Veen in July 2021. Priced at a mind-blowing €5,000 ($5,384/£4,284), it features a Wagyu beef patty topped with Beluga caviar, king crab, Spanish Iberico ham and white truffle, smeared with luxury BBQ sauce and held between two halves of a Dom Pérignon Champagne bun. The burger is sold at De Daltons in Voorthuizen, Netherlands, with proceeds from sales going towards a local food bank.

Australian pies might be renowned all over the world, but they're not usually quite this pricey. In 2015, the chef at The Lord Dudley Hote unveiled a $9,500 AUD surf 'n' turf pie. Fancy ingredients included Australian Wagyu eye fillet, two whole West Australian rock lobsters, French truffles and a generous scattering of German gold leaf. In today's money, it would cost around $11,860 AUD ($7,716/£6,138). 

Forget prosciutto and rocket. When it comes to fancy pizza, nothing beats master chef Renato Viola’s gourmet creation, which comes in at a whopping €8,300 ($8,942/£7,113). The Italian chef’s signature Louis XIII pizza is made with eight different types of cheese, plus caviar and lobster, seasoned with pink salt from an Australian river – each grain of which is picked by hand. You can order the meal anywhere in Italy with three days' notice, and a small catering team (including Renato himself) will travel to your house to prepare it for you.

A seemingly ordinary British pub holds the record for the world's priciest pie, according to Guinness World Records. The pie, serving eight people, cost £8,195 (or £1,024 per slice) in 2005. Nowadays, that equates to around £13,875 ($17,444) per pie, or £1,734 ($2,180) per slice. The luxurious sharer was made with Japanese Wagyu beef fillet, Chinese matsutake mushrooms, winter black truffles and French Bluefoot mushrooms, in a gravy laced with two bottles of vintage 1982 Château Mouton Rothschild wine. It’s worth noting that The Fence Gate does offer more reasonably priced pies, such as the one pictured, too.

The world’s most expensive taco – and one of the most expensive dishes available anywhere, ever – came in at an eye-watering $25,000, and was available at Mexico’s Grand Velas Los Cabos resort in 2017. To make it, Kobe beef, Almas Beluga caviar and black truffle brie were piled inside a gold flake–infused taco shell. A luxurious salsa made from dried Morita chilli peppers, premium Añejo tequila and civet coffee beans accompanied the dish, which would be worth around $31,650 (£24,994) in today's money.

Now discover the most expensive foods the world has to offer