The caviar trend: the luxury fish eggs on restaurant menus everywhere - Food Files

Feb 21, 2024

Luxurious fish eggs are popping up everywhere.

Caviar used to feel special. Now it’s just a bump, a down-your-gullet, Instagrammable show of wealth that belies its inherent sensual pleasure and ignores the intricate process and care involved in growing and producing the coveted edible pearls.

Once the stuff of Russian billionaires and royalty, caviar has seen a recent surge in popularity in Australia, teetering on the line between opulent and mainstream as more of us embrace it as an accessible luxury.

Lately, caviar has appeared beside jaffles in Darlinghurst and poolside at Uccello, where Oscietra caviar comes with buttered toast and “raw beef”. Doot Doot Doot, Jackalope’s extravagant fine diner, 10 grams of Oscietra Caviar comes with a spring onion crumpet and smoked cream for $95. At Filipino restaurant Chibog in Footscray, a raw fish dish similar to ceviche called Kinilaw uses yellowfin tuna, a dressing made from coconut cream and vinegar, and caviar.

We’ve witnessed the rise of the “caviar bump”, a sexy ritual that involves licking, or sucking, a dollop of caviar onto your closed fist on the thin skin between the thumb and forefinger. Hold your eye roll: the warmth of your body actually raises the caviar to the ideal temperature. Fish roe has a high fat content, and if you warm it a little, the flavour is enhanced. You wait a moment, take a sip of ice-cold vodka, and hoover the caviar from your knuckles in one suck.

The caviar bump is more than a gimmick. It’s a trick of the trade used to test the quality of the roe. It’s been the de facto way for caviar producers to showcase to caviar sellers, who now use the same technique to sell to chefs.

With this novel idea up their sleeves, chefs found a way to print money: Just add caviar. They seem to have spent the better part of the last decade refining this great upsell, wiggling it onto virtually everything on their menus. But for the diner, is it worth the hefty price tag, and what are you even eating anyway?

When you request a serving of caviar at Mimi’s in Coogee, it will be theatrically wheeled to your table on a cart. The waiter pours you a nip of vodka from a bottle encased in ice, dips a mother-of-pearl spoon into a tin of Black River caviar, then dollops a “bump” of it onto your skin. At Mimi’s the caviar offering sets the tone for the whole place, an other-era ritual given a contemporary and playful spin.

At S’more in Sydney’s Castlecrag, the menu encourages you to make special the full blood Wagyu MB9+ tartare with potato crisps with either a $30 or $60 garnish of caviar. Here as well, a Siberian caviar bump comes with a shot of premium Belvedere vodka to wash it down, for $50.

The caviar bumps and truffle add ons at S’more have made the neighbourhood bistro a hit luxe destination, a something-special night out. It’s the kind of place where you can order the 900g 2GR Full Blood Wagyu MB9+ bone in Rib Eye for $388 and then add Spanish black truffles for $60 or more if you like.

The jury is out on whether caviar bumps, and some other iterations of caviar on menus, are just another ironic permutation of a high-low trend – think cheeseburgers paired with Champagne or wagyu served inside cheeseburgers. And trends pass. Or is the gusto around it just the rebound that happens after you lock people inside for a couple of years, tell them to wear masks and stop them spending their money either because they’ve lost their jobs or because all the restaurants have closed?

Giving us the option to add scoops and bumps and extras – and this is true for truffle or wagyu as much as it is caviar – has the potential to feel like the inverse of making dishes special. Those who can’t or won’t pay the extra $60 for a main feel somehow lesser, and those who can are often so busy Instagramming the moment there’s no room left for the actual textural and sensual bliss of it. When it’s everywhere, all these bumps and optional supplements can make caviar seem ordinary. And it’s not.

Related story: Go cray with these luxe lobster recipes

For chefs, there’s a benefit to adding caviar to whatever dishes they can, offering bumps and selling small quantities to more people. It allows them to move through bigger volumes of caviar and buy it at better prices, and it’s a boon for diners who have the opportunity to taste the luxury product at a fraction of the cost. A restaurant’s caviar bump is a relatively affordable extravagance. Because caviar bumps come from larger tins, usually ranging from 500 grams to a kilo, it is a cost effective way to give their customers something playful and delicious.

Woodcut, the Sydney restaurant from chef Ross Lusted, has been drawing praise for a couple of years for its singular approach to caviar. He uses N25 Caviar, which starts on his menu at $310 for just 50g of their Oscietra. A warm griddle cake comes with lemon cream, chives and N25 caviar for $35.

“Caviar has been everywhere and served with almost everything. It is like when wagyu first appeared on menus, now it is in burgers, “ says Lusted.

All caviar is not created equal, Lusted warns those on the hunt for a bump. “Caviar can come in many forms. Some can be extremely salty, packed in large formats from where they are repacked into smaller tins. This process can break the eggs and some larger format tins as you get to the bottom the eggs are broken.”

Originating in the Yunnan Province of China on the 25 degree north latitude (hence the N25 name), just 10 percent of the N25 aquaculture farm’s production goes into their range. “It really is one of the best products in the world,” he says. “The maturation changes the favour significantly, the pearls are bright and clear, the flavour intense and distinctive to the variety. N25 only packs in small format and never repacks from mother tins.”

If the caviar is good, Lusted is an advocate for the bump over something more elaborate that overshadows the egg, he says. “Caviar is a pure flavour and it should be enjoyed just as it is. A lot of caviar has been served with a multitude of condiments, mostly to mask the poor quality of the eggs. Personally, I like it with a soft omelette, warm steamed potato with lemon scented cream, Japanese rice with nori and a little soy – this is my favourite with salmon roe,” he says.

At prices like those at Woodcut, the exclusive N25 caviar isn’t within every diner’s reach, or want, but Lusted also champions the work of Yarra Valley Caviar and its first harvest salmon roe. At the cold seafood counter at Woodcut, 50g of the lightly salted first-harvest Yarra Valley salmon roe is available for $59. It’s “an amazing product”, says Lusted, and it’s readily available, even to try at home.

Lusted labels caviar a “haute cuisine product”, and urges diners to “know your caviar” when ordering it in a restaurant. “Ask the provenance, understand the varietal, and if this is your first experience of caviar, please don’t judge all caviars by that. Like Wagyu, some is only good in burgers.”