The Expensive, Bougie Goods You Can Buy At Costco

It's easy to miss the fact that Costco sells a lot of bougie foods since most of the higher-end items are available online rather than at the club itself. As it turns out, you don't need a local gourmet grocery store selling Wagyu beef and caviar when you can buy the same stuff at Costco. Among the selection, you'll find that some products are expensive luxury imports, whereas others are shipped from restaurants you only wish you could visit.

While warehouse clubs like Costco have become synonymous with bulk value among customers, they also offer lavish extravagances if you know where to look. The trick is to go online; you might be surprised by what you find. The luxury items on our list run from around $80 to nearly $7,000. Whether you're looking for a high-end spice, convenience food, delicacy, or a food experience to share, Costco has you covered with these expensive bougie goods.

They might look like rice vermicelli noodles but swallow bird nests are actually made from dried bird spit. You can buy two swiftlet nests for $89.99 at Costco. Oddly enough, they're edible, though we're curious about the first person who thought that eating a bird's nest was a good idea. In one legend, Chinese royalty first acquired them from Indonesia in the search for the secret to eternal youth. In another tale, hungry soldiers stranded on an island in Southeast Asia discovered them after desperately boiling swallow nests for potential food. Today, people in China and around the world still consume swallow nests for their purported health benefits, with unverified health claims ranging from younger-looking skin to increased libido.

The cost for swallow bird nests ranges from $2,600 to $7,400 per kilogram. So, you're not really getting a good deal buying your swallow nests from Costco since they come out to $8,999 per kilogram. However, it's all about scarcity if you can't find them elsewhere. This is definitely a luxury eating experience since swallow nests really don't taste like much on their own. Culinary-wise, it's more about the textural experience of adding them to other foods like soup broth or drinks to produce a gelatinous texture and slightly sweet flavor.

Juice cleanses have been popular for years and are a fairly trendy and bougie practice. Popular reasons to go on an all-juice diet include improving your health, weight loss, flushing out toxins, and acquiring healthier-looking skin. Costco makes it easier to do a juice cleanse by selling a 35-pack of pre-made shots and juices that will last you five days. Not having to purchase lots of fruit and vegetables separately to run through a juicer is definitely convenient, which is why Costco's juicing pack costs $139.99. The good news is that it's all organic with no added sugar, colors, or flavors.

A juice cleanse provides fewer daily calories than ordinary meals, so weight loss is likely to occur. Unfortunately, with Costco's juices ranging from 124 to 165 calories per 12-ounce serving and the elixirs only providing 20 to 30 calories per 2.4 ounces, you're likely to spend all five days hungry and low on energy. While consuming juice is certainly an easy way to gain the health benefits of fruits and vegetables, Healthline reports you'd get even more from eating them whole since juice lacks fiber. The outlet also notes there's not enough evidence to prove that just drinking juice actually cleanses your body of toxins or improves your skin. That being said, if you are low on time and want to boost your nutrient content with some ready-made juices and elixirs, this 5-day organic cold pressed juice pack will make it easy.

You don't often see quail for sale at most grocery stores. Cornish game hens are far more common, but the two birds have some differences. Quail has a greater proportion of dark meat than chicken, and the intensity of its flavor lies somewhere between chicken and duck. You'll also find that it takes a lot more quail for a meal than you would need if you were serving Cornish hen; the average quail only weighs a quarter of a pound as opposed to a pound and a quarter for a Cornish game hen. So, keep in mind that the box of 32 quail you can buy from Costco for $299.99 will only feed a fraction when compared to the same amount of a different poultry bird. Still, you're going to end up with around eight pounds of meat, so it's not insignificant.

Quail costs so much more than chicken because it's still a niche market with low demand. The birds are more expensive for farmers to raise than chickens since they need food with higher protein content. Additionally, it requires a lot of selective breeding to get quail that hatch at a decent rate. Plus, despite being smaller birds, it takes a lot more effort for a quail farmer to catch, pluck, and process quails compared with chickens.

Considering that a single leg of Iberico ham can sometimes cost as much as $4,500, the ones at Costco are an excellent deal. Still, if you're going to pay $549.99 for a 15.4-pound ham, the least the store can do is give you a stand and knife to go with it. These pigs are some of the best-kept in the world, which is why Iberico ham is so expensive. The black-hooved animals live a life of luxury frolicking out in the wild Spanish Dehesa, where they have free access to many nutrients and fatty acids through the abundance of acorns they eat. The pigs used in the Iberico ham Costco sells all live in the Valle de Los Pedroches, which has the largest area of oaks in the world. In fact, the ratio of land to pigs is 2.5 acres for every animal.

Since Iberian pigs descended from wild boars, their meat is leaner than what you would get from ordinary farm pigs. You'll notice that the fat is marbled throughout the meat rather than lingering in a layer on the outside. This lean, fat-marbled meat sits in a cellar for three years while it is curing, as the fat melts and absorbs the aromas of the surrounding mountain air.

Who needs a regular rump roast from an ordinary cow for Sunday dinner when you can awe your guests with a Japanese Wagyu boneless ribeye roast? With the highest-priced Japanese Wagyu beef costing as much as $200 per pound, Costco's roast is a good deal at around $92 per pound. The whole 12-pound roast will cost you $1,099.99, so unless you're cooking for an army, you'll want to be ready to vacuum seal and freeze some of it for another meal. There are many ways you can enjoy this cut of fat-marbled meat. Try cutting it into cubes for stew, slicing it into steaks for the grill, or slicing it paper thin to cook piece-by-piece on a table-top grill.

Wagyu beef is a luxury meat prized for the continuous webs of fat that run through it that provide flavor and tenderness like no other. All this fat comes from farmers scheming to keep the cows inside a pen, stuffing them full of fattening grains three times a day until their bodies have almost as much fat as flesh. It's not all bad though; most farmers ensure their cows live a good life and feed them real food instead of pumping them up with hormones and steroids.

Not only is golden Osetra caviar rare, but it's among the best caviars available. Caviar connoisseurs like it for its nuttiness and fat-laden creaminess, which is extremely popular atop a blini or served alone as a caviar bump. Osetra caviar is a gourmet indulgence, and Costco's comes from farm-raised sturgeon cured in Greece. You'll find that the eggs are larger than most other types aside from beluga caviar.

Since it will last unopened in the fridge for a couple of weeks, you can relax about how quickly you have to serve it. However, since Costco's golden Osetra caviar comes in a 35.2-ounce tin, it begs to be shared with 30 to 50 of your closest bougie friends. This huge container of caviar will set you back $1,999.99, but it promises a great experience. Plus, it comes with a thermal tote bag, which allows you to bring it anywhere while preserving its freshness. As an extra touch, you get two fancy mother-of-pearl spoons for serving.