A commitment to serving otherworldly plates of Scandi food and meticulous attention to detail are just two reasons why chef René Redzepi’s Noma has been named the world’s best restaurant on four occasions. Seafood is a speciality on his recently re-invented menu and crab doesn’t come any finer than in his simple but inspired king crab salad.

You can't get a much more decadent cup of coffee than Emirates Palace Abu Dhabi's palace cappuccino. Sprinkled with real 23-carat gold flakes, the gold cappuccino is served on a polished silver tray and comes with a date and a dark chocolate. It's not cheap, obviously, considering the drinkable bling and you'll pay 60 AED, or about £12.50/$16, for the privilege.

We know that spuds come in a multitude of varieties but did you know that La Bonnotte potatoes can sell for £523 ($660) per kilogram (2.2 lbs)? They grow in the mineral-rich soil of the small French island of Noirmoutier and are only in season for around a week in early May. You’ll need to time your visit to La Bonnotte restaurant, where potatoes are something of a house speciality, just right to get a taste.

Love cooking spuds at home? Try these 30 brilliant tips for perfect potatoes every time

Fugu is a delicacy in Japan but parts of the unusual-looking fish, also known as a blowfish, are highly poisonous, so only highly trained and licensed chefs are allowed to serve it. This Ginza gem is heralded as the best fugu restaurant in Tokyo, serving dishes such as blowfish sashimi, as well fried fugu and fugu hotpot.

Farmed at Coffin Bay Oyster Farm in southern Australia these huge oysters, often called the steak of the ocean, are sold exclusively at Sarins in the Eyre Peninsula, where they can go for as much as £59 ($75) per oyster. The almost kilogram-heavy (around 2 lbs) oysters are so big and expensive because they're allowed to grow for up to six years and have a lot more meat than other varieties.

Chef Manjunath Mural has been busy redefining Indian food at this restaurant, and been rewarded with a Michelin star for his trouble. His elegant take on the classic cuisine is prepared using both traditional and modern methods. Treat yourself to the Song's Art Palette – a sample of several dishes, including two curries and a kebab from the tandoor, on a single platter. 

One of Barcelona’s best restaurant, Canete is a wonderful place to eat traditional Spanish tapas with added fine-dining flair. Eat in the Barra, which is a homage to a classic Spanish eatery where clients gather around the bar for a drink and a few tapas. Quality products and attention to detail ensure the jamón Iberico, gazpacho, fried fish and prawns et al are hard to beat.

None other than Anthony Bourdain dubbed Franklin Barbecue’s beef brisket, which is notoriously difficult to cook, as the best he’d ever had. This Texan smokehouse started life as a food truck but global fame means you’ll now have to wait in line for hours to get a taste of its perfectly barbecued fare.

Guy Savoy is a living legend of the culinary world. His Paris restaurant has been voted the best in the world many times and has long held three Michelin stars. In his hands, the simple pea becomes a delicacy. His famous medley of young peas looks beautiful and tastes divine.

This New York institution has been around for more than 100 years selling hungry punters the best sandwich experience money can buy. Indeed, even though they are huge, one classic pastrami on rye could set you back £20 ($25), so remember to bring your wallet as well as your appetite.

Sample a piece of theatre at Otto's as you dine on canard à la presse – a 19th-century dish in which a cooked duck carcass is crushed in a silver press at the table. Expect lots of brandy, ritual and a big silver contraption to play a part in this three-course duck dining experience for two.

Chef Nobu Matsuhisa's eponymous restaurant, opened in the 1980s, shot him and his signature dish to fame when Hollywood stars flocked there to taste it. He then went on to launch the Nobu chain with his mate Robert De Niro, as you do. But where better to eat his black cod with miso, in which the fish is soaked for several days in the salty-sweet miso marinade to make it silky and deeply seasoned, than in the original LA hotspot?

The brand’s original site on the Avenue des Champs-Elysées dates from the mid-19th century when Pierre Desfontaines first thought of taking two macaron shells and joining them with a delicious ganache filling. It was here that Ladurée opened a sumptuous tea shop above its patisserie so people could enjoy their macaron immediately. Head there to snack on this sweet treat surrounded by washes of its signature soft green and gold, and acres of rich fabrics. Exquisite.

Massimo Bottura, arguably one of the world’s finest chefs, serves a number of signature dishes at Osteria Francescana, recently voted the best restaurant in the world. But his sweet reinvention of this staple, the caesar salad in bloom, is an aesthete’s dream. Delicate leaves folded into a fan covered in powdered berries, it’s hard to imagine a more beautiful meal.

These mushrooms are facing extinction in Japan’s Okinawa region. The amount harvested has fallen by half in recent years, only hiking up the price to about £794 ($1,000) per kilogram (2.2 lbs) for the highest-grade mushrooms. The three Michelin star kaiseki (traditional multi-course meal) restaurant, Mizai, is the perfect place to sample this rich and flavoursome mushroom.

Aficionados should not miss the five-course tasting menu at Europe’s oldest – and possibly the world’s finest – ice cream parlour, where well-turned out staff devotedly scoop gelato into cups with due reverence. Plough through the medley of hazelnut ice cream, chocolate ice cream, vanilla ice cream, mint stracciatella, a little sorbet, an ice ball of Gianduja, before finally sampling the famous Pinguino popsicles, the first-ever ice cream on a stick.  

Queues snake around the block long before this restaurant opens. But it’s worth the wait: Thipsamai is the place to taste an original version of Thailand’s most famous dish – a sweet and spicy egg-wrapped combination of noodles, prawns and prawn-oil sauce.

The humble egg is transformed into one of the world’s most expensive meals at this Manhattan eatery, Norma's, at Le Parker hotel. Its zillion dollar lobster frittata contains American sturgeon caviar, a whole lobster and a healthy helping of eggs, cream and chives and will set you back £1,550 ($2k). Well, they do say you should breakfast like a king...

Abalone is of the most expensive shellfish you can eat, costing as much as £393 ($500) per kilogram (2.2 lbs). And celebrity chef Yeung Koon-yat, who helms Bangkok’s Ah Yat Forum restaurant, is known as the Abalone King. Ah Yat Abalone is his trademark dish, made by soaking the shellfish for eight hours in water, simmering it for 10 hours in a special sauce which gives it the distinctive flavour.

This New York restaurant is famous for its decadent desserts. It’s where the great and good from Andy Warhol to Beyoncé have stated their cravings and also home to the world's most expensive dessert – the golden opulence sundae. The Tahitian vanilla bean ice cream covered in 23-carat edible gold leaf coated in amedei Porcelana, one of the world's most expensive chocolates, will set you back £775 ($1k). But, for that, you do get to take the crystal goblet home too.

Restaurateur Alan Yau’s Michelin-starred etiquette-free restaurant eschews fusion food for the old school classics of Chinese cuisine. The four dim sum served for dinner: scallop shumai, Chinese chive dumpling, Sri Lankan mud crab wonton and Sichuan vegetable dumpling, are already legendary.

Where else would you go in search of the most delicious pastries but Paris? And Odette is world-renowned for its perfect choux à la crème, a cream puff, which it offers in several varieties including chocolate, vanilla, caramel, praline and pistachio, to tantalise your taste buds. It’s also located in a charming, cobbled side street, so pull up a seat outside, order an espresso and a choux à la crème, and have the perfect Parisian experience.

Sushi is an art form and its grand master is Jiro Ono who, at more than 90 years old, still works at this three Michelin-starred Edo-style restaurant. Sukiyabashi Jiro has just 10 counter seats and a waiting list months long, so getting a spot takes commitment. But, when you do get in, the omakase tasting menu of about 20 sushi pieces, made in front of you for immediate consumption, should provide an almost religious experience.

These rare truffles from Piedmont grow unpredictably and only in the wild. They also taste delicious, with a deep musky aroma and subtle flavour, which is why they cost about £2,100 ($2,643) per kilogram (2.2 lbs). Eat them at their finest on their native soil at Piazza Duomo in Alba. Tucked away in narrow streets Enrico Crippa's Michelin-starred pink, frescoed restaurant is one of the world’s finest. Committed to the seasonal and local, the tasty truffle often adorns its dishes.

Kobe beef comes from wagyu cattle raised in the Hyogo region of Japan. Its rich flavour and tender texture makes it highly desirable and you could pay up to £200 ($251) for a kilogram (2.2 lbs). And where better to eat it than in Kobe? The city is brimful of steak restaurants but Dining Mouriya strictly selects high-quality beef from Tajima cattle, the breeding cattle of kobe, which have been fattened for 32 months to maintain the quality of this subtle, tender, savoury meat.

These top chefs reveal their secrets for cooking the perfect steak

London’s Piccadilly is the place to locate many of the finest things money can buy, including caviar. Whether you’re after the world's most expensive variety, almas, which will set you back £20,000 ($25,473) a kilo, or the ultra-rare beluga, you’re most likely to find it on the menu at this grass-fronted seafood restaurant, which is the epitome of sleek, understated luxury.   

Naples is the home of pizza but the nearby small city of Caiazzo boasts the best pizzeria in the world. Chef Franco Pepe’s family have been baking in the region for three generations and, by sourcing his ingredients from the immediate area and ensuring they are of the highest quality before creating his fluffy dough in his exceptional ovens, his restaurant is a mecca for pizza-lovers.

In the US? Check out the most outrageous pizza joint in every state

Champagne experiences are 10-a-penny, but where do those in the know go? To Ruinart. The oldest established champagne house – it has been producing since 1729 – enjoys prime position at the top of the hill on Rue des Crayères, which has the deepest and most spectacular chalk cellars in the region. Book a tour of this UNESCO World Heritage Site to discover the essence of the region and its wines and, of course, taste its graceful, chardonnay-focused cuvées.

Now see why champagne conquered the world

Burger-lovers travel from across the globe to this old-school butchers' shop-with-restaurant to taste its Smash Burger, which has twice been named the best burger in America. Made with a grind of aged filet, sirloin, rib-eye, New York strip, shoulder, rough grind, chilli grind, and Benton’s shoulder, and packed with onions, pickles, BBQ sauce, it’s almost too delicious to describe. Which is the perfect excuse to get yourself to Mississippi and give it a try.

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Chef Mark Perkins has turned the British institution into an art form, transforming the typically dainty selection of sandwiches and sweet treats into celebrations of the capital’s cultural life, and it's twice been voted best contemporary afternoon tea to boot. His current Van Gogh-inspired show-stoppers aren’t just perfect to look at, either. They’re sure to be a work of art on your taste buds, too.

Now discover the strangest limited-edition versions of your favourite foods