The World's Most Expensive Burger Is Made Out Of A Bougie Type Of Beef

Tucked away in the quaint Netherlands town of Voorthuizen, the world's most expensive burger is served under the red awnings at De Daltons. Located in the heart of downtown, De Daltons sits in a large white building with oversized ice cream and French fry décor over the front door and specializes in street food made to order. The main menu features a lineup of burgers and spareribs, street tacos, loaded fries, and even Hawaiian-style poke bowls. You can expect to pay $12 to $17 for burgers topped with cheddar or coleslaw and pulled beef at this unassuming diner-style joint, but there's a far more expensive item available if you're willing to call ahead and drop a nearly $800 deposit.

The burger is called the Golden Boy, and it'll cost you more than $5,000, including your deposit. It must be ordered two weeks in advance so the restaurant can gather the mountain of ingredients that surround a juicy, tender patty of A5 wagyu beef. It'll arrive at the table in a cloud of smoke on a golden bun, piled high with some of the most expensive luxury foods available.

The first Golden Boy was served with plenty of fanfare in 2021, with all proceeds going to charity. In breaking the Guinness World Record for most expensive burger on the planet, it unseated the previous title holder — a behemoth, nearly 800-pound burger made by an Oregon food service company in 2011, which had a $4,971 price tag.

The Golden Boy's burger patty is made with chuck short ribs and A5 Japanese Wagyu beef, the world's most coveted beef. The meat is marbleized with fat that literally melts in your mouth. Depending on the grade, wagyu beef can cost anywhere from $50 to $200 per pound. That's just the beginning of the list of bougie ingredients in the Golden Boy. The tender beef patty comes topped with white truffles, Alaskan king crab, Beluga caviar, English cheddar, onion rings, and Paleta Iberico Bellota ham; all stacked inside a gold-leaf-covered saffron-infused bun.

Dom Pérignon, the iconic, vintage bubbly from the heart of France's Champagne region, infuses luxury into both the bun and battered onion rings that adorn this burger; it can retail for $185 per bottle or more. Beluga caviar, meanwhile, could cost you around $150 to $200 per ounce, while white truffles average around $4,000 per pound, and fresh Alaskan king crab costs around $60 per pound. Of course, saffron is one of the most expensive spices, going for $10 to $20 per gram. Edible gold, like the kind encrusting the Golden Boy's bun, is typically somewhere between 22 and 24 karats. (You can buy 10 leaves of 24-karat edible gold for around $30.) Iberico ham is the last exquisite ingredient in the sandwich; an iconic shoulder cut of Spanish ham that comes from the Iberian Peninsula, it's known for having marbled tenderness and decadent flavor. It's also known as the most expensive cured meat on earth, retailing at around $55 per pound.

The Golden Boy would be enough to impress anyone with its combination of bougie beef, decadent caviar, crab, and edible gold-leaf-covered bun infused with vintage champagne, but De Daltons found a way to zhuzh it up even more. It's served with a side of barbecue sauce made from Macallan single malt whisky and Kopi luwak, or civet coffee, which is one of the rarest and most expensive coffees in the world. Kopi luwak coffee beans are partially digested by civets — small Southeast Asian mammals related to mongooses — then collected and cleaned for brewing.

Just before the burger is delivered to your table, it goes under a glass dome, where the staff will immerse the Golden Boy in wafts of whisky-infused smoke. It'll arrive at your table with the smoke still clinging to its edges. As you sit down to eat the burger, the experience will likely be different than indulging in other bougie meals like truffle-topped scrambled eggs, and you'll certainly pay more than you would at even the most expensive steakhouses in the United States. However, if you're looking for a meal that is stunning and over the top, look no further than the Golden Boy.