Opinion
Is caviar worth the exorbitant price? No, but here’s why I must buy it anyway
Terry Durack buys oscietra caviar for himself every birthday. And time stops whenever he eats it.
Is caviar worth it? It can’t be. At Simon Johnson, 30 grams of beluga caviar costs $209. A 100-gram tin of the stuff is priced at $730. Nothing that disappears so fast could be worth so much.
But first, a quick primer. Caviar is the salt-cured roe of sturgeon, a long, bony, snout-nosed fish found in the Caspian Sea that dates back to the Middle Jurassic period. The different varieties of sturgeon, and therefore caviar, include beluga, oscietra and sevruga.
While fishing for wild sturgeon has been banned since 2006, female sturgeon are now farmed in huge compounds of high-tech ponds in countries as diverse as Uruguay, China, Italy and the US. Their eggs are carefully harvested, then cleansed, salted and aged. It’s a tricky, labour-intensive and slow process – and, therefore, an expensive one.
Mind you, chefs think caviar is worth it. There’s a dedicated caviar section on most top restaurant menus, not least because all they have to do is crack open the tin and cook up a few blinis.
The clever ones offer a caviar “bump”, in which a teaspoon of caviar is spooned onto your hand in the hollow of a clenched fist and you lick or slurp it off. It’s how caviar has been sampled in the countries around the Caspian Sea for centuries, I’m told, but here? In a restaurant? It smacks of untold wankery.
Caviar’s high prices are based on the size, taste and textural quality of the eggs. The best are smooth and glossy, with nutty, buttery, rich and oily characteristics.
As for being worth it? I still say no. And I buy oscietra caviar for myself every birthday because I stupidly, senselessly, adore it. Not because it’s rare, high-status or decadent, but because it blows my mind with its briny, savoury, mouth-filling richness like nothing else.
It’s the culinary equivalent of diving into a raging surf wave, immediately drowning your thoughts. Time stops. Blame the umami taste of glutamate, which in caviar is enhanced by inosinate and guanylate for a triple whammy, and under whose influence I completely forget the price I have paid.
Is there a caviar-aversion therapy treatment out there at some expensive wellness spa? Perhaps. But I’d rather spend the money on caviar – even if it isn’t worth it.
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Terry Durack is the chief restaurant critic for The Sydney Morning Herald and Good Food.