How much would you pay for a panettone? A fiver, from the supermarket? Maybe £25 for a “gifting” version in a wrapper smart enough to take to a dinner party, or even £50 for a designer model, say Dolce e Gabbana or Gucci, in a posh tin?
But £900? That’s the price tag on a new Gianpaolo Bassi panettone, marketed as “the most expensive in the world.” Yes, more than a return flight to Australia. You could buy a serviceable second-hand car in fact… or blow it on a puffed-up Italian fruit cake.
So is this yet another “most expensive” publicity stunt? The practice has a long history: back in 43BC Cleopatra won a bet with Marc Antony as to who could produce the most costly banquet by simply dissolving one of her priceless pearl earrings in a glass of vinegar and drinking it. Conspicuous consumption at its most literal.
The juxtaposition of the mundane (vinegar) with the pricy (pearl) remains central to marketing tropes today. It’s why mainstream, low-cost foods such as pizza and burgers are given a luxury makeover – headline-grabbing mostly because we want to know how a burger can be made to cost an extortionate amount. And if it can possibly be worth it.
Generally, becoming “the world’s most expensive” is as simple as showering the prosaic with ultra-expensive luxury garnishes. Think wagyu in your kebab, lobster in mac ‘n’ cheese, truffles, caviar and, yes, gold leaf on everything. The kind of bling that makes Saddam Hussein’s famous gold bathroom look positively utilitarian. But, at least his taps worked; whether these bloated creations are delicious is neither here nor there when you consider the cost.
To be fair, the Bassi panettone (which costs £900 for 1kg including delivery to anywhere in the world) contains none of those ultra-luxe clichés. Instead it is made with butter from a secret Alpine source, almonds from Puglia and Manuka honey from New Zealand. Birch sap, which costs around £20 per litre online, replaces all the water in the recipe. Unlike supermarket versions, which are mostly made months in advance of Christmas, it has no preservatives, emulsifiers or other weird industrial ingredients. For this reason it has a shelf life of just two weeks, and is produced to order in batches of no more than 10.
Most significantly, according to Bassi, it is baked in moulds carved from Carrara marble, a material prized for its stability and density and mined near the bakery in the town of Carrara, Tuscany. The stone makes for a very even, gentle bake and is also high in calcium carbonate which is said to reduce the acidity of the panettone.
Munching my way through a slice or two, I couldn’t say it was noticeably less sour than any other panettone. But it was supremely light-textured, buttery and barely sweet. In the interests of fairness, I packed up a couple more pieces and whisked them home to try alongside a supermarket panettone which, at £5.50 for 500g, is one eightieth the cost.
How did they compare? The supermarket version had a much heavier texture and left a coating in my mouth which needed washing down with plenty of coffee. Its candied peel was weirdly tasteless, while the Bassi peel packed a proper citrus punch. Still, the cheap version was nice enough, in a sweet, cakey way.
Would I buy the cut-price version and save the £894 change? Undoubtedly, though I’ll be toasting it to improve the texture. And I’ll maintain a fond nostalgia for that morsel of plutocrat’s panettone. It’ll be something to mull over on that flight to Australia.
The priciest gourmet creations on the globe
World’s most expensive chocolate bar
£369
Ecuadorian chocolate company To’ak says its chocolate is the most expensive in the world, and you can pre-order 50g bars from its Masters Series for £369. To’ak says it costs that much because the chocolate is created like a fine wine, “exponentially more elaborate and consciously designed and impeccably sourced than anything else”. Arguably it’s trumped, price-wise, by a Cadbury’s chocolate bar that, albeit not consciously designed, went on Scott’s expedition to the Antarctic which sold at auction in 2001 for £470.
World’s most expensive kebab
£925
In 2016, Chef Onder Sahan of Hazev restaurant in London’s Canary Wharf created a kebab to prove that it could be a luxury, not just for eating late at night while drunk. It starred wagyu beef, morel mushrooms and 25-year-old balsamic vinegar which cost £185 for a 10cl bottle at the time.
World’s most expensive steak
£1,450
There are plenty of claims to this but when chef and theatrical salt-sprinkler Nusret Gökçe (aka Salt Bae) opened Nusr-Et restaurant in London in 2021, the signature dish was a gold-leaf coated tomahawk steak for £1450, which if you were lucky was carved, table-side, by the man himself. Critics ridiculed the dish, and it’s no longer on the menu.
World’s most expensive burger
£4,295
The Guinness Book of Records lists the most expensive burger as a caviar-loaded chimera created by Robbert Jan de Veen at De Daltons restaurant in the Netherlands in 2021. It had champagne-battered onion rings, wagyu beef, king crab and a gold-leaf covered bun. It was sold for €5000 (£4295) in 2021 when the restaurant was shut down by Covid – so takeaway only.
World’s most expensive cocktail
£32,685
Restaurant and cocktail bar Nahaté in Dubai (where else?) was once home to the world’s most expensive cocktail, created by legendary bartender Salvatore Calabrese. It was auctioned in April 2025, with the lucky buyer taking home the two 1937 Baccarat glasses it was served in. The cocktail itself included vintage 1930s Angoustura Bitters and Kina Lillet, a no-longer-made aperitif that’s a key ingredient in James Bond’s Vesper Martini. The price tag, a cool €37,500 (£32,685), may indeed leave you shaken, not stirred.
World’s most expensive pizza
£7,218
Master pizza chef Renato Viola offers a Louis XIII pizza for €8300 (£7218), but only for local orders. For that price, he’ll cook it in your home and bring a sommelier to serve champagne Krug Clos du Mesnil 1995 (itself selling online for over £2000). The pizza toppings include three types of caviar, lobster, mantis shrimp and a few drops of rare Remy Martin Louis XIII Cognac. There’s no report of one ever being sold.