“Welcome to the caviar class you guys didn’t know you needed!” says Danielle Zaslavsky, smiling at the camera. Her family owns Marky’s, an American caviar company; she shows off its products on TikTok by dolloping glossy sturgeon eggs on everything from tortilla chips to ice cream.
She is not the only caviar connoisseur taking the rarefied foodstuff to the online masses. Videos tagged #Caviar have 4.7bn views on TikTok. “Caviar bumps”—which involve slurping roe off your hand—have become a social-media trend. Restaurants have added them to their menus.
Demand for caviar is voracious. Caviar Russe, an American retailer, says the volume of sales has quadrupled since 2019. (Their 50g tins start at $115 and go up to $1,000 for the rare Almas Osetra.) The Business Research Company predicts that the global caviar market, currently worth $3.1bn, will grow to $4.6bn by 2029.
Caviar has long been synonymous with opulence. It was a favourite foodstuff of Russian tsars. By the 19th century caviar was served in fine-dining establishments across Europe; it later symbolised the glamour of the Gilded Age in America. Soon high demand led to overfishing and reduced supply, which drove prices up.
Why is this delicacy fashionable again? One reason is that restaurants are making the most of its unique texture and salty versatility. Some serve it with fried chicken and crème fraîche. Caviar Kaspia, a chain of restaurants, tops fluffy baked potatoes with buttery caviar. The dish makes up 70% of orders at its London branch.
Gen Z gourmets, always alert to new trends, have taken notice. Viral videos “played a huge part” in caviar’s resurgence, argues Ms Zaslavsky, as they presented it as “relatable and attainable”. Novices learn how to open a jar and which variety to try for a less fishy taste (Kaluga).
Yet the caviar industry is changing, thanks to a series of bans and restrictions on wild caviar. Today almost all caviar is farmed. Russia and Iran were once the largest exporters, but now China is the world’s leading distributor; around 15% of the global supply comes from the city of Ya’an. Caviar prices remain high because of the time it takes for a female sturgeon to reach maturity. The Beluga species, for instance, can take more than 20 years.
In the future, cheaper “cultured caviar” may be widespread, as firms are experimenting with making it in a laboratory. The methods vary, but Caviar Biotec, a British company, takes stem cells from sturgeon roe, grows them, then induces the cells to differentiate into eggs. (It is a process used in other kinds of lab-grown meat.) It could drastically reduce the amount of time it takes to retrieve eggs.
Such methods, if successful, could one day make caviar much less expensive. But that could undermine its allure. How many TikTokers will want to show off that they are eating cheap fish eggs? ■
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