Beluga's 24-karat Golden Cigar with Almas Caviar. Supplied
Beluga's 24-karat Golden Cigar with Almas Caviar. Supplied
Beluga's 24-karat Golden Cigar with Almas Caviar. Supplied
Beluga's 24-karat Golden Cigar with Almas Caviar. Supplied

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


Hayley Skirka

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.

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.