By Adam Rabiner
Those of a certain age might mistake Feeding the Super Rich for a long-lost episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. It’s a television documentary series filmed 30 years later for a new generation. While the rich have only grown more opulent in that span, Robin Leach’s signature sign-off, “champagne riches and caviar dreams!” still holds true.
Unlike the former show, which aired from 1984 to 1995 and featured all manner of decadence, this newer reality television series (2015 to 2019) fixates exclusively on what, how and to some extent why the billionaire class eats the way it does. The answer to that is often: simply to impress. Here, precious metals won’t adorn a sink, but 24-karat gold leaf may top the $1,000 Golden Opulence Sundae, wrap macarons or dark chocolate tortes, or even encase a steak.
Of course, food is more than just sustenance for the non-super-rich. It delivers pleasure and can represent family or community. A Facebook post of an exquisite dish on an indulgent night out at an expensive restaurant might also signal privilege. But for the super-rich, food is often used as entertainment and spectacle to impress fellow billionaires, show off and convey status. These rich folk live in a different world entirely. Episode one features Bubble Food, a catering company that exclusively serves these folks, and boy, oh boy, do these people live in their own bubbles.
Despite the trappings, extraordinary luxurious settings and fancifulness, in the end, it is all just food.
It might seem too insufferable to immerse oneself needlessly in the lives of the uber-wealthy. But, fortunately, the yacht owners summering on the Côte d’Azur, the private jet owners and the mansion dwellers are peripheral. They issue silent commands for $3,000 bottles of Rémy Martin, which send their underlings scattering to fulfill their every culinary desire. But they are mercifully offstage, at most referenced hilariously by those who satisfy their whims. Chef Jeremy Kelly relays a story about his boss, a Russian oligarch, who overloads a blini with way too much Beluga Caviar and joyfully forces him to eat the disgusting concoction. It is a funny story that illustrates the contrast between the expensive ingredients and the actual culinary experience.
Instead, Feeding the Super Rich typically focuses on the entrepreneurs who make a living in this exclusive, rarefied world. There is a modest, middle-class husband and wife who are attempting to create a new food fashion trend by producing, marketing and selling snail eggs, which they are branding as “Escargot Pearls.” Another businessman brainstorms how to keep his small catering company alive and profitable, and stumbles upon the idea of expanding his catering from just private planes to people’s homes.
One delightful, humorous and eccentric character is William Hanson, a young English gentleman who teaches high table manners and etiquette to Dalia, an heiress from Uzbekistan who loves everything English and wants to comport herself properly among her friends in the British aristocracy.
Despite the trappings, extraordinary luxurious settings and fancifulness, in the end, it is all just food. The super-rich still eat the same trendy things that everyone else does, be that kale, wheat germ powder, goji berries, hemp protein seeds or Mānuka honey. Hell, some of them even have a penchant for Marmite, though by the time it makes its way from England to a grocery store in Nice, to the loading area of a middleman like Bubble Company, or to the galley of a billionaire’s yacht, the original price of €2.5 become a final delivered price of £80.
The true revelation is not that the super-rich eat that much differently from the rest of us. We’ve probably had a dish presented with culinary flair and a puff of smoke. Rather, it’s these folks do not care about price. They blithely throw parties at £1,000 a head. They’ll order a kilo of king crab at that price with the same insouciance as you or I will order an egg roll at a Chinese take-out joint.
Though we may feel a pang of envy as they unthinkingly order their Japanese Wagyu beef from cows indulged with beer and personal massages, or oysters and sea urchins shipped in from the cold waters of the Arctic Ocean, most of us don’t feel the need to be so showy and ostentatious. Give us a cold craft beer and a decently made medium-rare cheeseburger and we are just as happy.
Feeding the Super Rich Tuesday, May 12, 2026
To receive a screening link, visit our website.
Adam Rabiner lives in Ditmas Park with his wife, Dina.