Is this Dubai's most expensive ingredient? Rare caviar served up at Beluga restaurant

Dubai is renowned for its love of luxury so an exorbitantly priced dish on a menu is not exactly unprecedented.

However, a new addition to the list at Beluga – the city’s only caviar restaurant – might take the title of the city's most expensive.

Visitors dining at the Mandarin Oriental Jumeira restaurant can now order the 24-karat Golden Cigar with Almas Caviar, the rarest type of fish roe in the world.

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Beluga's cigar-like dish is carefully rolled into shape before being oven-baked. The filling is constructed from a recipe that uses premium smoked salmon, yuzu, mustard, double cream and lime zest caviar. There’s also a dipping sauce, but according to the chefs at Beluga, the recipe for that is top secret. Rounding things off is a serving of Almas caviar – the rarest and most expensive caviar in the world.

The dish will set you back Dh1,550 but that almost seems like a bargain compared to the price of a 250-gram portion of Almas caviar. It retails in Beluga for Dh36,305.

Beluga is Dubai’s only caviar-dedicated restaurant, serving French cuisine with a modern twist and a fish-roe-centric menu.

The world's love for caviar stems from ancient times – the Persians were the first group of people to consume it, the ancient Greeks imported salt-cured roe from Crimea in southern Ukraine and the Romans credited it with medicinal properties.

Country-size land deals

US interest in purchasing territory is not as outlandish as it sounds. Here's a look at some big land transactions between nations:

Louisiana Purchase

If Donald Trump is one who aims to broker "a deal of the century", then this was the "deal of the 19th Century". In 1803, the US nearly doubled in size when it bought 2,140,000 square kilometres from France for $15 million.

Florida Purchase Treaty

The US courted Spain for Florida for years. Spain eventually realised its burden in holding on to the territory and in 1819 effectively ceded it to America in a wider border treaty.

Alaska purchase

America's spending spree continued in 1867 when it acquired 1,518,800 km² of Alaskan land from Russia for $7.2m. Critics panned the government for buying "useless land".

The Philippines

At the end of the Spanish-American War, a provision in the 1898 Treaty of Paris saw Spain surrender the Philippines for a payment of $20 million.

US Virgin Islands

It's not like a US president has never reached a deal with Denmark before. In 1917 the US purchased the Danish West Indies for $25m and renamed them the US Virgin Islands.

Gwadar

The most recent sovereign land purchase was in 1958 when Pakistan bought the southwestern port of Gwadar from Oman for 5.5bn Pakistan rupees.

From Zero

Artist: Linkin Park

Label: Warner Records

Number of tracks: 11

Rating: 4/5

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