Japan's Most Expensive Michelin-Starred Restaurant Makes Crab King

At some point in your life, you've probably visited one or two special occasion restaurants; places you go for birthdays, anniversaries, or seriously impressive accomplishments. Perhaps you went to a steakhouse where you felt the need to put your napkin across your lap or a sushi place where a master chef prepared potentially deadly fugu for you. Either way, you probably felt a pang of guilt after the meal was over and you had to pay the check. If that's the case, chin up. At least you didn't go to Ginza Kitafuku, the most expensive Michelin-starred restaurant in the world.

Michelin stars are ratings that were originally given out by the tire company, Michelin. Today, the esteemed Michelin Guide handles the ratings. The most stars a restaurant can get is three. This marks it as a world-class establishment, but receiving even one star is a prestigious honor. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of Michelin-starred restaurants are expensive, but even with such stiff competition, the one-star Ginza Kitafuku stands alone: The crab-focused restaurant has by far the most expensive tasting menu offered by any Michelin-starred restaurant, costing $2,130 per person.

A tasting menu is essentially a multi-course meal consisting of many small plates, progressing from amuse-bouche and hors d'oeuvre to the literal and figurative "meat" of the meal. Unlike the à la carte dining most people are used to, where we order a single dish from a set of options, tasting menus are set by the chef. For this reason, they are very popular in fine dining. Ginza Kitafuku offers several such courses, the cheapest of which is the king-size hair crab course. This course costs around $250 dollars.

The most expensive course — the one that goes for over $2,000 — features Echizen crab, a prized species that's caught near the city of the same name. However, the Echizen crab Ginza Kitafuku serves isn't just your average delicacy, it's kiwami, a grade of Echizen crab that only a tiny fraction of each year's catch is good enough to attain. Customers can add multiple non-crab courses to the Echizen crab course, pushing the price even higher. Guests are also encouraged to throw themselves into joy of sake by adding the sake pairing for a further $50.