Move Over Caviar. The Hottest Luxury Ingredient Is Crab

It’s a perplexing time in the world of luxury ingredients. Prestigious products have become inextricably tied to fast food. Caviar now adorns chicken nuggets; truffle features in supermarket hummus and Starbucks egg bites; wagyu beef is getting smashed into burgers and has made the menu at Burger King in the UK. Even lobster — bright red and festive — has gone from attention-getting centerpiece to mac-and-cheese mix-in.

Yet crab retains its mystique. It’s beloved for its delicately flavored, finely textured meat — and for its fatty, rich roe and tomalley, culinary categories unto themselves. Now large, live specimens from the far corners of the world, like snow crab from Japan and red king crab from Norway, are this season’s luxury signifiers.