The bluefin tuna is a species in decline. While the Pacific variety isn’t as endangered as the West Atlantic bluefin, it’s quite telling that half of the 600 devices that researchers from Tag-A-Giant attached to Pacific bluefins were returned to the New York-based operation by fishermen seeking the $500 reward for each device. Combine the pressure from fishing with the weather experienced in the region this year and you have a species that may not be around to see 2010.

It certainly doesn’t help that it’s such a tasty fish.

In early 2009, a 282-pound bluefin caught off the northern coast of Oma was sold to a pair of rival restaurateurs who set aside their differences to procure the massive fish for $100,000. In 2001, a 440-pound tuna was sold for the phenomenal price of $220,000.

In 2010, however, the 440-pound tuna’s record was beaten by the sale of a gargantuan 513-pound bluefin. Sold at Tokyo’s Tsukiji market, the most expensive tuna in the world was also purchased by a confederacy of restaurateurs—this time the owners of two sushi restaurants in Japan and the owner of one in Hong Kong.

As the world recently celebrated the start of a new year, sushi connoisseurs worldwide also celebrated a brand new record for the world’s most expensive tuna sold at auction. Purchased at the same Japanese fish market as the previous record holder in Tokyo, this blue fin tuna is substantially bigger than its predecessor. At 269 kilograms (539 pounds), Kiyoshi Kimura purchased the delicious fish at $1,238 per pound.

When you do the math, it adds up to $736,000 US. Kiyoshi, the CEO of a popular sushi chain reportedly bought the most expensive tuna in the world to celebrate his restaurants’ obviously soaring profits while also taking advantage of the publicity that comes with such a purchase.

Tokyo’s Tsukiji Fish Market

Part of the reason for these phenomenal prices, of course, is the bluefin’s rarity. While forty-one bluefin tuna were sold at a 2008 auction, only three were sold at the same auction in 2009. The economic crisis, however, may have been a boon for the bluefin population as consumers found the fish too rich for their wallets. In adition, The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas reduced the quota for the 2010 catch to 13,500 tons—around two-thirds of the former quota.

Still, offering a reward for the prize in the fish’s belly might not have been such a good idea after all.

Lindeth Howe Country House Hotel in Windermere, Cumbria has recently served the world’s most expensive dessert to a British diamond merchant, Carl Weininger.

The 3 inch by 3 inch chocolate flavored cake, made to appear like a Frabrege egg, was infused with peach, orange and whiskey and layered with champagne jelly and a light biscuit joconde. The edible parts were finished with dark chocolate and of course no record breaking dessert is complete without gold leaf.

To fully bring the dessert to the level of an ostentatious display, the dessert is topped with a two-carat diamond.

The dessert cost a mere £22,000, or around $34,000 USD.

Marc Guibert, the head chef, prepares the extravagant dessert.

As if Texas’ most expensive Super Bowl menu weren’t enough, 2011′s Super Bowl XLV will also see the most expensive Super Bowl buffet in the world.

Manhattan’s Old Homestead Steakhouse is offering to take over one lucky person’s kitchen on Super Bowl Sunday, when the Green Bay Packers will play the Pittsburgh Steelers. The steakhouse’s executive chef, Oscar Martinez, will prepare a variety of finger foods, including Kobe beef burgers and hot dogs, French fries with Kobe beef, Maine lobster and Miami stone crabs.

The main course will be a sirloin steak covered in black truffle shavings on toasted baguettes and chicken wings covered in horseradish and topped with Beluga caviar.

That will be followed by tortillas covered in smoked salmon and crème fraîche, as well as filet mignon kebabs and a fine Champagne.

If that inspires you to reach for your wallet, keep in mind that the price for this breathtaking buffet is an equally staggering $25,000.

TMZ has uncovered what will be the most expensive Super Bowl menu in Texas, where the Green Bay Packers will play the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLV.

The menu, catered by Legends Hospitality Management and served to the wealthy occupants of an Arlington suite, will include three shifts as well as unlimited beer, wine and soda. The theme of the menu is “comfort food.”

Pre-game, the football fans will be served house made spiced kettle chips with French onion dip, jalapeno white cheddar and texas pecan kettle popcorn, winter fruit, beef tenderloin, fruits and nuts, southern chicken salad, and mini Kaiser rolls.

After kick off, the menu includes organic citrus salad, organic greens with Texas ruby red grapefruit, hearts of palm with black pepper croutons, Texas slow smoked brisket, a truffled macaroni and cheese bar, chopped tomatoes, apple smoked bacon, bourbon ham, Dublin barbecue sauce and more mini Kaiser rolls. For dessert, there will be mini moon pies, Texas blueberry pies, apple empanadas and blueberry caramels.

At half time, the occupants will be served warm Texas peach cobbler with mascarpone whipped cream.

As any chef can tell you, olive oil is among the healthiest cooking oils you can use. Studies have shown benefits for those suffering from ulcers, heart disease and high cholesterol. Of course, it’s also one of the most expensive cooking oils.

The most expensive olive oil in the world is called Lambda and is produced by Speiron Co. in Greece. The oil is labeled as an “Ultra Premium Extra Virgin Olive Oil,” and the Koroneiki olives used to make Lambda are harvested by hand and first cold pressed to produce a fruity and well balanced flavor. The oil is even packaged by hand in an attractive 500 ml bottle.

Ordered directly from Speiron, Lambda costs €40.90 (US $54) per bottle or €150 (US $200) in a special gift box. For the truly extravagant, Speiron offers a bespoke, hand-crafted case with two 18k gold plates—one of which, along with the bottle, bears the owner’s name—for a price of €11,000 (US $14,698).

Cheese on toast is a snack consisting of, as the name implies, cheese and toast. Butter and creative use of seasonings and toppings make the variations of this simple snack almost limitless. As Chef Tom Bridge demonstrated in 2006, the price for cheese on toast can be equally limitless.

Bridge’s Welsh Rarebit is a slice of Warburtons Toastie bread topped with creamy Lancashire cheese, chosen for its unique melting consistency, as well as L’Aquila white Umbrian truffles and Matsutake Chinese mushrooms. Considering the high price of both the truffles and the mushrooms, the dish cost a grand total of £345 (about US $609 at the time) to create.

Chef Bridge auctioned the most expensive cheese on toast in the world on eBay on April 27, 2006. The winner was treated to the Welsh Rarebit made by Chef Bridge in their own kitchen.

At $12 for a box of four, I’d hesitate to call these Xocolatl de David salted caramels the most expensive caramels in the world. They are, however, a luxury treat worthy of those with discriminating taste.

The caramels hail from Portland, Oregon, where chocolatier David Briggs sells premium handmade chocolates and other confections from his Xocolatl de David store. These particularly rich delicacies are each made with a different type of sea salt—Pangasinan Star Phillipine sea salt, Amabito No Moshio Japanese seaweed salt, Halen Mon Gold gourmet finishing salt and Iburi Jio Cherry Japanese smoked sea salt.

Expensive truffles are notoriously pricey because they are difficult to cultivate. This makes them a true delicacy that some have called the king of all fungi. White truffles are more expensive than black truffles, but what are the most expensive truffles in the world?

The Associate Press reported in 2006 that Hong Kong real estate investor Sir Gordon Wu and his wife paid €125,000 (US $160,787) at an annual truffle auction in Grizane, Italy, for a gigantic Italian White Alba truffle, reportedly the most expensive ever. This pricey truffle weighed in at 1.51 kilograms (3.3 lbs).

In 2007, the record was beaten by a truffle weighing 3.3 lbs. Casino tycoon Stanley Ho purchased the white truffle, hailing from Tuscany, for US $330,000 at an annual auction in Hong Kong.

In fact, Ho won the auction again in 2010 and even beat the previous record—pound for pound, at least. The latest auction was for two truffles weighing just under 3 lbs total. Once again, Ho paid $330,000 for the fungal delicacy.

With the current popularity of culinary television shows like Iron Chef, expensive truffles are being exposed to a wider audience than ever before. Who knows how much the price for a kilo of truffles will cost in the near future?

In its original form, the word “whisky” meant “water of life.” I’m sure some of you readers out there will agree with that sentiment. Luckily for you, there’s quite a variety of different whiskies (or “whiskeys,” if we’re talking about American or Irish liquors). Check out the most expensive whiskies in these popular varieties.

The Most Expensive Bourbon Whiskey
$300

The most expensive Bourbon is the 16 Year Old A. H. Hirsch Reserve, one of the few remaining examples of the Kentucky pot-still tradition.

The Most Expensive Canadian Whisky
$10,000

The world’s most expensive Canadian rye whiskey was presented to Queen Elizabeth II at the Kentucky Derby in 2007. If it were sold, it would be expected to go for over $10,000

The Most Expensive Irish Whiskey
$143,020

One of the last remaining whiskeys from the Nun’s Island Distillery in Galway, Ireland, this particular elixir is still up for sale at £100,000. If purchased, it will be the most expensive whiskey ever sold.

The Most Expensive Scotch Whisky
$460,000

A bottle of 64-year-old Macallan, the oldest whisky ever bottled by the Macallan distillery, became the most expensive whisky in the world when it sold at a charity auction in November, 2010. The catch, however, is that the auction also included a one-of-a-kind crystal decanter.

Scotch whisky is produced and aged, as the name suggest, in Scotland. By law, Scotch must be made from malted grain, must be matured in oak casks for at least three years and must have an alcoholic strength of less than 94.8% by volume. The age statement on a bottle of Scotch is determined by the youngest stock used in its production. The most expensive scotch whiskies in the world were each produced in one of the regions traditionally considered part of the Highlands region.

The Macallan 1926 – $54,000

This whisky, bottled in 1986 and rebottled in 2002, was auctioned in 2007 at Christie’s in New York. The auction was the first liquor auction allowed in New York state since the prohibition in 1920, and the Macallan was only expected to sell for between $20,000 and $30,000. The Macallan was produced in Speyside, formerly considered part of the Highlands region.

Dalmore 62 – $58,000

This single Highland malt Scotch whisky from the Dalmore Distillery in Inverness, Scotland, was one of only twelve bottles produced in 1943 from four single malts dating from 1868, 1876, 1926 and 1939. Each was labeled with its own unique name, this one being called Matheson after the Dalmore Estate’s owner, Alexander Matheson. It was purchased for £32,000 at the Pennyhill Park Hotel in Surrey, where the anonymous buyer reportedly shared it with five of his friends. It has been speculated that the buyer and his friends are the only people to have actually enjoyed a bottle of the expensive vintage.

Dalmore 64 Trinitas – $160,100

Yet another product of the Dalmore Distillery, Trinitas is so named because only three bottles of this expensive whisky have been made. The whisky is a blend of rare stocks, including some that have been maturing at the distillery for more than 140 years. Two bottles were sold in Glasgow in 2010, one to a US-based collector and one to a UK-based investor. It is the first Scotch to sell for six figures.

The Macallan 64 Year Old in Lalique – $460,000

A bottle of 64-year-old Macallan, the oldest whisky ever bottled by the Macallan distillery, became the most expensive whisky in the world when it sold at a charity auction in November, 2010. The catch, however, is that the auction also included a one-of-a-kind crystal decanter.

The decanter was created by Lalique using lost-wax casting, called “cire perdue” in French. The decanter was created to celebrate the anniversary of master glassmaker René Lalique’s birth. It is based on a decanter from the 1920s, when The Macallan distillery was founded. The crystal decanter and its expensive cargo have toured twelve cities to raise awareness for charity: water, including Paris, London, Hong Kong and its final stop at Sotheby’s in New York.

The entirety of the sale price of this expensive whisky was donated to charity: water. In addition, US $145,000 were raised for charity: water during the Macallan’s “tour du monde“.

Charity: water is a non-profit organization that distributes water to developing countries.

Beer is one of the oldest drinks known to man—and one of this writer’s favorites. While many people enjoy drinking light and less expensive beer, there are still some beer connoisseurs out there. If you don’t believe it, then check out the proof–the world’s most expensive beers.

Tutankhamun Ale – $52 per bottle

This expensive beer has a peculiar history. It’s brewed in a Cambridge laboratory from a recipe discovered in the Queen Nefertiti’s Temple of the Sun in Egypt. The beer is named after the queen’s stepson, more commonly known as King Tut. The temple, which housed a brewery, is believed to have been built by King Akenhaten, Tut’s predecessor and likely father. This beer is also limited and may be purchased for $52 per bottle.

Samuel Adams Utopias – $100 per bottle

Vintage No. 1 may be four times as expensive as Samuel Adams/Boston Beer Company’s Utopias, the former most expensive beer, but Utopias still holds a Guinness World Record for being the strongest beer at 50 proof.

Utopias was brewed with a blend of high-quality hops and sold in an ornate copper-plated brew kettle and offers a flavor unlike any other expensive beer or beverage in the world. The sweet flavor is richly highlighted with hints of vanilla, oak and caramel. The expensive beer is non-carbonated and should be served at room temperature.

Production of Utopias was limited to 8,000 bottles.

Carlsberg Vintage 3 – $348 per bottle

The Carlsberg Group, a brewing company founded in 1847 and named after founder J. C. Jacobsen’s son Carl, is best known for their light-bodied lager, Carlsberg Pilsner (also known as Carlsberg Beer or Carlsberg Hof). In 2008, however, Carlsberg introduced another beer guaranteed to be linked to the Carlsberg name in the public consciousness, Vintage 1.

Vintage 3 is the third in the trilogy of beers created from 2008 to 2010. At the time of its launch, the “pale barley wine” was the only available beer to have been aged in French Côte d’Or oak barrels in the Carlsberg founder’s original cellar. Only 1,000 bottles of this exclusive beer were hand tapped and labeled with art by Kaspar Bonnén and two artists selected from the Radiant Copenhagen project.

The price of Vintage 1, 2,008 Danish kroner, reflected the year it was introduced. The brewer introduced Vintage 2 in 2009 and Vintage 3 in 2010, priced at 2,009 and 2,010 kroner respectively.

Brewdog’s “The End of History” – $765 per bottle

Well, PETA is going to have a field day with this one. Scottish brewery BrewDog has produced a beer served in bottles as shocking as the beer’s extremely high alcoholic content.

Only eleven bottles of this expensive beer, named after a book by philosopher Francis Fukuyama, were produced. The blond Belgian ale, infused with nettles from the Scottish Highlands and fresh juniper berries, is 55 percent alcohol and will be BrewDog’s final high ABV beer.

The bottles, however, are the beer’s most striking aspect–each one is encased in a squirrel or weasel stuffed by a gifted taxidermist. The four grey squirrels and seven weasels selected were all roadkill, however, so their immortalization as beer bottles may actually be considered more respectful than ignominious roadside decomposition.

Antarctic Nail Ale – $800

If your conscience rails at the thought of drinking beer clothed in roadkill, perhaps you’ll find this entry on our list of the world’s most expensive beers more to your taste. Australia’s Nail Brewing Company has been brewing craft beer for nearly a decade, and their limited edition Antarctic Nail Ale sold at auction for a record-breaking price. Best of all, that money is going straight to charity.

This expensive beer was brewed with actual Antarctic ice. Only thirty bottles were produced, and the number one bottle was sold by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society at an auction in Fremantle, Western Australia.

Sea Shepherd opposes whaling in the Antarctic sanctuary. They are also selling bottles numbered two through ten to support their cause. The number one bottle was purchased by the Elliot Syndicate.

It’s probably no surprise to you that Blendtec, the appliance company whose founder promotes his products by blending non-food items from deodorant to smartphones in the infamous Will It Blend? videos, sells the most expensive blenders in the world. What may surprise you, however, is just how much one of these state-of-the-art blenders can cost.

The Blendtec Smoother Q-Series 20 Amp is their most expensive countertop option, and it has the features to justify the price. This blender isn’t just powerful; its copolyester sound enclosure and muffled motor stand ensure that it is also quiet. The blender can even be built into your countertop to reduce its height by 8 inches. This commercial blender can be had for a staggering retail price of $1,199.95.

The most expensive blending appliance offered by Blendtec, however, is their enormous Megablender Frozen Beverage Machine. This blender dispenser is over 6 feet tall. The refrigerated system features paristoltic pumps that can dispense six different products into the jar. It also features a monitoring system that keeps track of the ice and product levels. This extraordinary machine has a retail price of $22,105.

Beef noodle soup is a Chinese dish consisting of beef, beef broth, vegetables and noodles. While it’s generally served as a side dish in the West, it can constitute a whole meal in its country of origin.

The most expensive beef noodle soup in the world is available from a restaurant called Beef’s Father Noodle in Taipei. The restaurant’s owner, Mr. Congyuan Wang, traveled for five years in order to find the best beef. The resulting soup contains several different kinds of premium beef from the US, Australia and Japan.

Only ten bowls of the expensive soup are served daily, and each one costs a hefty $320.

Just when you thought you had everything you needed for your ultimate luxury kitchen, somebody comes along with some new kitchen necessity made with the utmost quality, the finest materials or the latest technology. This time, it’s the most expensive saucepan in the world.

This sumptuous saucepan was unveiled at the Millionaire Fair, where Russia’s wealthiest men and women gather to celebrate the lifestyle their inordinate wealth affords them. The saucepan’s handles and lid are elegantly decorated with 18k gold and 270 diamonds. Unfortunately, this saucepan is only suitable for serving food, not cooking it.

The saucepan was created by German cookware brand Fissler and is priced at $209,000.

Riesling, made from a variety of grape bearing the same name and originating in the Rhine region of Germany, is a dry white wine known for its lightness and apple-like aroma. The wine is particularly sensitive to the region in which it is produce and the best Rieslings come from Germany, where they are made with a delicate balance of sweetness and acidity.

The most expensive Riesling in the world was produced by Weingut Keller. Only six double magnums of the wine, G-Max 2009, were made and three of them were kept by the winery’s owner, Klaus Peter Keller. The wine placed first of thirty German grand cru Rieslings at a professional blind tasting held in Berlin in September, 2010, the day before the remaining three were auctioned.

One double magnum of the G-Max was sold for €3,998.40 (US $5,566.57) to an anonymous collector from Luxembourg at the auction.

In the US, we usually think of macaroons as a kind of coconut meringue cookie. In fact, macaroons can also be made from many kinds of nut, although almond is the most common nut to use.

Pastry Chef Piere Herme is the latest of four generations of pastry and bakery chefs, and began his career as an apprentice at the age of 14. Today, he is the owner of thirteen stores in Paris and Tokyo. He’s also the creator of Macaroons Haute Couture, the most expensive macaroons in the world.

These macaroons consist of two meringue puffs, made with balsamic vinegar and fleur de sel, held together by your choice of a range of ingredients from peanut butter to chocolate made with red wine. The cost varies based on your choices and you could end up paying a staggering $7,414 for these costly cakes.

What kind of cheese sandwich would you expect from a celebrity chef? Your standard grilled cheese sandwich certainly wouldn’t do. Martin Blunos, who has held two Michelin stars for over fifteen years, has answered that question with what is likely the most expensive cheese sandwich in the world.

The sandwich, unveiled at the Frome Cheese Show in Somerset, is made with a cornucopia of fine ingredients. Black tomato, fresh figs, red amaranth and slices of quail egg are just a few of the fillings held between three slices of sourdough bread. The cheese itself is also notable—West Country vintage farmhouse cheddar blended with white truffle.

This savory sandwich cost £111 (US $170) to create, and it is currently being considered for a Guinness World Record.

What better way is there to make the most of your summer than to get outside and throw some steaks, hot dogs or even veggie burgers on the grill?

The Talos Outdoor Cooking Suite is an open-air professional kitchen custom-built to your specific needs. The hand-crafted stainless steel exterior houses a 42” grilling area, three 25,000 BTU cast burners, a 20,000 BTU searing station and griddle, a hardwood cutting board and a warming drawer to keep your food ready to serve. It even has a bartending station with everything you need to mix your guests’ drinks.

Of course, all that convenience comes with a hefty price. This expensive grill can be had for $35,000.

If you’re looking for something truly spectacular, however, then settle for nothing less than the most expensive grill in the world.

This grill, created by BeefEater for the “World’s Finest” exhibition, features six high-output barbecue burners, a wok burner, a roasting hood with viewing window, a vaporizer grid and a warming rack and reflector system.

Oh, and it’s also plated entirely in gold.

Unfortunately, the grill will likely never see mass production. If it did, however, estimates put the price anywhere from $50,000 to $150,000.

Regular readers might expect the most expensive salad in the world to be sprinkled with edible gold leaf and topped with enormous brilliant cut diamonds. In this case, however, the dish itself is deserving of the price tag—even if it does have a bit of gold leaf.

The most expensive salad was created by celebrity chef Raymond Blanc at the Hempel Hotel in London in observance of Florette National Salad Week in 2003. The salad took six hours to create and included such fine ingredients as Florette Baby Leaf salad, beluga caviar, grated truffle, potatoes decorated with gold leaf, Cornish crab and lobster and 30-year-old balsamic vinegar. The 50 grams of Almas golden caviar, made from the eggs of albino and Oscietre sturgeons and formerly reserved for Russian tsars, is the true draw of this sumptuous salad.

The Florette Sea and Earth Salad came to £635.60 (US $1,013) to create—and the costly caviar alone accounted for £600.

The most expensive hot dogs in history weren’t exactly special. Sure, they were limited items available for only a few days in Stockholm. Sure, it cost 999 Swedish kronor ($130 USD at the time) to get one. The pricey hot dogs, however, were no better than your average street vendor may sell you.

The expensive hot dogs were part of a United Nations initiative to highlight global poverty. The idea was that, for one of the billion people worldwide who live on less than a dollar a day, paying the standard price of a hot dog would be like your average, comfortably living individual paying $130. These expensive hot dogs were available from in September, 2005, from the United Nations Development Programme’s Nordic Office. They were sold by a number of Swedish celebrities and politicos.

The most expensive hot dog currently available, however, is a different story entirely. The Guinness-certified sausages are sold by Serindipity 3 in New York City’s Upper East Side. The Serendipity Foot-Long Haute Dog was launched on National Hot Dog Day on July 23rd, 2010. The fancy frankfurter is made of beef and grilled in white truffle oil. The bun is salted pretzel bread that has been toasted in white truffle butter. The hot dog is topped with duck foie gras, caramelized Vidalia onions, heirloom tomato ketchup and Dijon mustard. Black truffles are included in both the foie gras and the Dijon mustard.

The most expensive hot dog in the world is priced at a staggering $69 and must be ordered 24 hours in advance.

Serendipity 3 is also the home of the world’s most expensive sundae.

A Heligan pineapple.

A fruit produced in the Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall, England, may just be the most expensive pineapple in the world.

The gardeners at Heligan, who began restoration of the derelict gardens in 1990, first purchased fruits for the Pineapple Pit in 1994. Utilizing the same techniques used 70 years ago, during Heligan’s heyday, Heligan’s Productive Gardening Team produced a miniature pineapple that was, according to the gardeners, “the most delicious pineapple flavour ever tasted.”

The “hotbed” technique used in the Pineapple Pit involves heating 30 tons of straw and horse manure through glass. The team was lucky enough to locate the proper mixture of straw and horse manure at a stable near Falmouth, about an hour from the gardens.

While the price of a modern day Heligan pineapple is yet to be announced, the original Heligan pineapples are estimated to have cost the Victorian equivalent of $15,000 to produce.

After the first fruit was tested by Heligan’s gardeners, the second was delivered, by hand, to the Queen.

(via Daily Mail)

The baked potato may not be the most healthful item on your plate but, thanks to chef Ben Kingdon of The Cary Arms, it could be the priciest.

The Cary Arms is “The Inn on the Beach” in the coastal town of Torquay in Devon county, England. It’s there that Kingdon produces the gastropub food for which the inn is known—including the most expensive baked potato in the world.

The 24-year-old chef refers to this delicacy as the “tuxedo spud,” as a baked potato is known in Great Britain as a “jacket potato.” The potato’s flesh has been mixed with creme fraiche, lemon, chives and spring onions, and topped with caviar. Sides include balsamic-roasted vine tomatoes and a side salad, served with the potato on a wooden board. The dish is served with a glass of champagne.

The expensive potato is priced at £40—US $60. Unfortunately, only one was ordered in the two weeks after its debut.

Filipino chef Angelito Araneta, Jr. specializes in extravagant foods to be used during courtship and marriage proposals. In 2009, he created a $2,500 “carat” cake coated completely in gold flake and topped with diamonds. In 2010, he created a dish that looked somewhat more, well, edible—the most expensive sushi in the world.

Each of the five pieces on this sushi plate is covered with a leaf of edible gold and garnished with a .2-carat African diamond. The plate was presented at a Milanan restaurant in June.

The dish was valued at 91,800 pesos, or just under $2,000.

You can’t put a price tag on good company—or can you? While some might shell out for an entrée laden with gold flake and white truffle, foie gras or a Cabernet Sauvignon from Chateau Mouton Rothschild, patrons of the world’s most expensive lunches are there for one thing—the company of billionaire investor, industrialist and philanthropist Warren Buffett.

For the last decade, Mr. Buffett has hosted these Power Lunches to benefit the Glide Foundation, a San Francisco community-based charity organization. The lunches are auctioned on eBay and, at $2.63 million, this year’s Power Lunch beat the 2008 record of $2.11 million. The winner and up to seven guests may dine with Mr. Buffett at Smith & Wollensky in Manhattan.

This year’s record-setting lunch is particularly auspicious as demand for the nonprofit’s services has increased by thirty percent during the recession, while donations have fallen by twenty percent.

Another expensive lunch was had by Roman Abramovich in 2009. The Russian billionaire and nine other guests dined in at Nello’s restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper East Side for $52,000. That lunch included three bottles of La Tache, two bottles of Chateau Petrus and two magnums of Cristal Rose—each wine being $5,000 per bottle. Other highlights of the lunch include three plates of truffle tagliolini at $195 each and two plates of truffle carpaccio for $100 each. The group was apparently feeling generous, as they supplemented the over-$7,000 automatic gratuity with an additional $5,000.

The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) has surveyed water prices in twenty Western countries. Their findings indicate that Denmark may have the most expensive tap water in the world.

Water in Denmark costs $6.70 per cubic meter. That’s about 2.5 cents per gallon–quite a bit more than in the US, where a gallon of water costs between .07 and .2 cents. Part of the reason for this price is that it includes the price to clean and dispose of the water. This practice has led Danish consumers to use water more conservatively, but it has also strained their agricultural industry.

The least expensive water came from Mexico, where citizens pay about 50 cents per cubic meter.

The most expensive cereal in the world isn’t available in stores. In fact, there’s not enough to fill a whole cereal box—after all, there’s only one “Great Illinois Corn Flake.”

The corn flake was discovered in 2008 by a 15-year-old in Chesapeake who, likely unaware of the monumental importance of her discovery, noted that it looked like Illinois. The significance of this fine anthropological relic, of course, is that Illinois is the second-largest producer of corn in the US.

It soon found its way to eBay, where it was offered with a jewelry box and free shipping. Unfortunately, their first attempt to sell the Great Flake—an auction that reportedly reached $200,000—was barred by eBay’s food policy. They were, however, able to work around the policy by instead selling a coupon redeemable for one Great Illinois Corn Flake. The coupon was sold to TriviaMania.com for $1,350.

Of course, the story of the corn flake’s origin could just have been a marketing ploy like the world’s most expensive french fry.

Cheese is probably the most popular dairy product in the world, a food that predates written history. In 2004 alone, over 18 million metric tons of cheese were produced worldwide. The world’s most expensive cheeses, however, are a little harder to come by.

One expensive cheese is only produced at one farm and at a very specific time of year. Unusually, the cheese isn’t made from cow’s milk—the milk comes from moose! Moose House, a 59-acre moose farm located in northern Sweden, is where the cheese is produced from three foundling moose named Gullan, Haelga, and Juna.

The moose are unusually tame, which is the only reason Moose House owners Christopher and Ulla Johannson can collect milk for the cheese. Even then, they can only be milked between May and September and the process takes about 2 hours per animal, hence the outstanding price of the cheese.

The moose cheese is 12% fat and 12% protein and only about 660 lbs are produced annually. The Johannsons sell it to high end Swedish hotels and restaurants for about $500 per pound.

If you’re surprised that moose cheese is so expensive, then you’ll be floored by Pule, the most expensive cheese in the world.

Pule comes from the Zasavica reserve north of Belgrade, capital of Serbia. A kilogram of the smoked cheese is priced at €1,000—around $616 per pound—but has no special ingredients beyond 25 liters of donkey milk.

Yeah, you read that right—donkey milk. The cheese even gets its name from the animals, as pule is the Serbian word for foal.

The milk is collected from 100 Balkan donkeys that make their home in the Zasavica Special Nature Reserve. The cheese is low in milk fat which, according to the reserve’s manager, is why no one else is making it.

Their success with pule has even spurred the reserve’s staff to find more applications for donkey milk, from cosmetics to a special donkey milk liqueur.

by Hunter Davis and Jeremy Harris

Bottled water is big business–I mean, really big. In less than ten years, bottled water consumption has doubled, with prices about 100 times that of tap water. Whether you think bottled water is healthier or it tastes better, or even if you happily drink tap water, it’s clear that bottled water is here to stay.

Bling h2o – $40+ per 750 ml bottle

Hollywood writer-producer Kevin G. Boyd tapped into the bottled water market with an image approach. His water, Bling h2o, has been spotted in the hands of numerous celebrities and even at awards ceremonies like the Emmy’s, Grammy’s, and the MTV Video Music Awards.

The water is bottled in Dandridge, Tennessee, probably the least notable quality of the most expensive bottled water. Boyd’s approach to the bottled water market is as extreme as the limited edition bottles themselves. They come frosted, corked, and boasting hand-applied Swarovski crystal. Bling H20 boasts that it has won the gold medal at the Berkely Springs International Water Tasting Festival with its nine-step purification process. If you are a water elitist, be prepared to spend $40-60 for a 750ml bottle. If you are buying your expensive bottled water at a club, be prepared to spend more.

Hawaiian deep seawater – $33.50 per 2 oz bottle

This seawater is so lucrative that the Hawaiian government is now allowing bottlers to use a state-certified logo for their deep seawater for a nominal fee. Hawaii Deep Marine Inc.’s Kona Nigari water, for instance, sells for $33.50 per 2 oz bottle. It’s extracted from a depth of 915 feet, over 700 feet more than is necessary for the water to be considered deep seawater.

Acqua di Cristallo Tributo a Modigliani – $60,000 for a 1.25 ml bottle

The world’s most expensive bottle of water is truly unique. Designed by Fernando Altamirano of Tequila Ley, who holds the records for the world’s most expensive tequila and cognac bottles, the 24k gold-coated bottle is based on the work of late Italian painter and sculptor Amedeo Clemente Modigliani. It holds 1.25 ml of blended spring water from France and the Fiji Islands, as well as glacier water from Iceland.

The world’s most expensive bottled water went up for auction on March 4th, 2010. Proceeds from the auction went to the Planet Foundation.

Altamirano also produced a similar “dummy” bottle of gold, silver and platinum festooned with 6,000 diamonds. It was valued at $3.3 million.

If you’ve never been to a restaurant that serves genuine ramen, you’re likely to think of ramen as the cheapest of all foods—a brick of instant noodles accompanied by a sodium-rich flavor packet, all for about twenty-five cents. It shouldn’t be too surprising, however, that the most expensive ramen in the world is something completely different.

At the ultra-exclusive Fujimaki Gekijyo restaurant in Tokyo, patrons can feast on the Five-Taste Blend Imperial Noodles. The dish is made with over twenty ingredients, including high quality Chinese stock as well as another, spicier stock inspired by Thai tom yum soup. A bowl of Fujimaki’s exquisite ramen sells for a jaw-dropping $110.

Fujimaki Gekijyo is an omakase (i.e. menu-less), reservation-only restaurant that is only accessible to guest who have already dined at one of owner Shoichi Fujimaki’s less expensive restaurants. American diners will be able to try the expensive ramen when Fujimaki opens a restaurant in Los Angeles in August, 2010.

Tacos are undoubtedly one of the cheaper foods in life, but that doesn’t mean they can’t get the Most Expensive treatment. All you have to do is add gold and diamonds and voila—you have the most expensive taco in the world.

In this case, the “gold and diamonds” were actually hunks of filet mignon. Offered by Brentwood Restaurant and Lounge in Los Angeles, this fancy fare was a specialty entrée accompanied by pico de gallo, vegetable rice and black beans. Unfortunately, this expensive taco is not present on Brentwood’s online menu and we can only assume that it is no longer offered.

Brentwood’s filet mignon taco entree had a price of $38.50. That may not seem like much, but we’re talking about tacos here. If you know of a more expensive taco, though, let us know.