The gleaming black-and-gold dining room at Coqodaq is rowdy, and it is not even open for dinner yet. A table of “rappers and podcast hosts” are lingering over a late US$4,000 caviar-and-champagne lunch, executive chef Seung-kyu Kim says.
He does not mind – he wants his Manhattan restaurant, notorious for its caviar-topped chicken nuggets (US$28 per nugget), to be a place people visit to celebrate.
As bird flu forces stores in the United States to ration US$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 US$68 sour cream and onion dips in Nashville and US$73 egg salads in San Francisco.
“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,” says Edward Panchernikov, director of operations at Caviar Russe, a caviar restaurant in New York.