Long disconnected from earthly concerns, haute cuisine will now go to space

What would a meal for the one per cent look like? If it’s taking place aboard Spaceship Neptune, it might include, as Danish chef Rasmus Munk has proposed, “an edible piece of space junk from a satellite.” Munk, who has collaborated with a Florida-based space startup to launch six diners at a time to 1,00,000 feet above sea level, promises an out-of-the-world experience for $4,95,000 per ticket. Even by the standards of fine dining, the price is stratospheric.

This latest attempt, which is set to take off in late 2025, is very much in keeping with the ever more extravagant turns that fine dining has been taking, with the actual food on the plate starting to seem besides the point. From the eerie, flesh-coloured “ear” made of jello served to those celebrating their birthday at the Michelin-starred Mugaritz in Spain to the 10-seat Sukiyabashi Jiro in Tokyo which expects diners to follow strict rules while eating sushi (including how to hold chopsticks and how much soy sauce to use), haute cuisine is not just about pushing the boundaries of what people eat, but how many hoops they will jump through in order to do so — and how much they are willing to pay for it. The logical next step for this pursuit of more and more rarefied experiences could only be space.

While the less fortunate 99 per cent might wonder if paying half a million dollars, even for a meal in space, is worth it, the brain behind the operation has a loftier-than-10,000 ft goal in mind. “I want to highlight food as a common thread in our human existence, and it will be truly meaningful to serve it while gazing down at the Earth’s curvature,” Munk said in a recent interview. From an earthbound perspective, that image is its own caricature.