As New York Menus Top $800, the New Luxury Ingredient Is Crab

It’s a perplexing time in the world of luxury ingredients. Prestigious products have become inextricably tied to fast food. Caviar now adorns chicken nuggets; truffle features in supermarket hummus and Starbucks egg bites; wagyu beef is getting smashed into burgers and has made the menu at Burger King in the UK. Even lobster — bright red and festive — has gone from attention-getting centerpiece to mac-and-cheese mix-in.

Yet crab retains its mystique. It’s beloved for its delicately flavored, finely textured meat — and for its fatty, rich roe and tomalley, culinary categories unto themselves. Now large, live specimens from the far corners of the world, like ...