Chicken nuggets and caviar: Matt Preston dips into the trend - News + Articles

May 13, 2025

Leave our nuggies alone.

There’s long been a trend for pairing something familiar with something expensive. Burgers with foie gras. Hot dogs with Champagne. Recently, it’s the humble chicken nugget that’s been given the same treatment, with the unasked-for addition of caviar.

I think it was NYC chef and founder of Momofuku David Chang who first championed this combo. Subsequently, gastronauts like Sydney chef Big Sam Young were singing the praises of Macca’s nuggets and Beluga caviar.

Regarded as a more recent caviar and nuggies pioneer, Manhattan restaurant Coqodaq was selling a box of six nuggets with Petrossian caviar for US$100 at last year’s US Open. The nuggets retail for US$28 each at the restaurant. But it was Rihanna, posting on Insta about trying the combo last December, that was the tipping point. Her post gained more than 2m likes, prompting global restaurant take-up.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by badgalriri (@badgalriri)

This trend has really taken hold around the world. Now, whether you’re at an exxy restaurant like Beau Restaurant in Dubai or Afterglo in Taipei, or in the VIP room of new LA nightclub Zouk, you’ll find them. Sydney chef Faheem Noor even put the combo on the opening menu at his new Double Bay restaurant, Ruma Dining, because his pre-school-aged daughter likes it! I suppose it makes more sense than selling ‘bumps’ of caviar as an ostentatious appetiser, as was popular a couple of years back.

Hong Kong’s food guru Susan Jung, who has written the definitive book on fried chicken, Kung Pao and Beyond, sees the attraction: “Two delicious things together does not necessarily make something doubly delicious,” she says. “But nuggets are normally quite neutral in flavour, so the caviar makes them far more interesting”.

Part of the attraction of this combo in the US isn’t just the association of caviar with luxury (and its juxtaposition with something so blandly functional and everyday as the nugget), but that Chinese farmed caviar has driven down prices from US$440 a kilo to US$240 in the last 10 years, according to the South China Morning Post. We’ll have to see what impact US tariffs have on the nugget-and-caviar market in the coming months. Although the news that a team of researchers at the University of Tokyo have managed to create the world’s largest lab-grown chicken nugget (7cm wide x 2cm thick) offers the promise of a cheaper chook substitute in the long term.

While the caviar trend has been noisy, the truth is that nuggets were already booming. Sure, their poppability and the fact they’re an affordable addition to an order all help their popularity, but also, almost every fast-food place has nuggies on the menu. Katy Perry announcing that nuggets were her ultimate comfort food also helped. And there I was thinking that when Jamie Oliver graphically revealed what went into a chicken nugget on one of his campaigning TV shows, no one would eat them ever again.

If you want to make nuggets at home, try our cheesy chicken nuggets or parmesan chicken nuggets; or make some by blitzing an egg, a chicken breast, a little cornflour and cooked potato together to then scoop into balls and fry – you can bread them first if you want; or look for my simple schnitzel nuggets on my Intsta @mattscravat that are baked not fried, but still taste wonderfully buttery.