America adores food. Our love affair with food takes the form of buffets, chain restaurants and drive-thrus. The numbers are staggering: Americans spent about $500 billion eating out last year. While, in total, Americans spend roughly the same amount eating out as they do eating in, a select few with big stomachs and bottomless pockets spend more on dining in a week than the rest of us spend in a year.

A half-trillion dollars worth of food adds up to an unbelievable number of Happy Meals, but it doesn't look as impressive when considering that the average cost per person at one of the top ten restaurants in the U.S. is $174. For example, Masa, a Manhattan sushi restaurant, charges $446 for dinner for one. Another Japanese restaurant (so authentic that it's actually in Japan), Aragawa, prices out most consumers by serving steaks made with Wagyu beef, which costs about $200 a pound – a price owed to the cows' daily massages and sake.

While rare foods can be a novelty, they are rarely thought of as collectible. That changed in 2005, when a Tokyo pastry chef baked a $1.65 million cake. It ought to be tough to spend $1.65 million on a concoction consisting mostly of common baking goods, but adding over 200 inedible diamonds to the surface of the cake may have escalated the value. In fact, it's unfair to say this cake is worth only $1.65 million. The buyer receives a few thousand calories in addition to a diamond-studded cake.

Mislabeled cakes aside, some rare foods are also quite expensive. One example is a giant white truffle that sold for over $160,000. While it's tempting to poke fun at anybody paying such a sum for a giant underground tree fungus, the proceeds from the purchase went to a Hong Kong charity that cares for pregnant women and organizes adoptions – certainly important causes.

The high cost of glamorous restaurant food is also related to import fees, expert wait staff, and the international prestige of executive chefs. It certainly raises the tab at Joël Robuchon, a French restaurant in Vegas' MGM Grand Hotel and Casino. Due partly to his prestige (he's one of the most renowned French chefs), his restaurant charges $225 per person for a six-course tasting menu and $360 per person for the sixteen-course version.

If you're like me, you've never even heard of a sixteen-course meal – especially in Las Vegas, where most people just followthe "buffet" signs. Should you decide to buck that trend and find Robuchon's $360 bill a little too thrifty, head to Fleur de Lys at Mandalay Bay, also in Las Vegas. There, Chef Hubert Keller grills up Kobe burgers on truffle buns with truffle toppings and throws in an imported bottle of wine at no extra charge. The burger itself? That'll cost you $5,000.

If a cheeseburger already costs $5,000, why not hire your own chef to cook for you day and night? Many celebrities, including Jay-Z and Gwyneth Paltrow, employ private chefs. Jay-Z's chef deals primarily with chicken wings imported from Mexico, cooked to perfection and fed to his entourage, according to vh1.com and other reports. Paltrow has had a routine that required two chefs, one cooking primarily sweets, reported The Observer. If you're considering this route, make sure to have enough money leftover for a personal trainer.

It might be nice to one day eat a $500 meal, bite into a million-dollar piece of cake, or even have a personal chef waiting on my hunger-based whims. If that time never comes, however, I can take solace in the fact that ramen is still in the pasta aisle and costs less than a pack of gum.

Sources:

forbes.com; iht.com; mgmgrand.com; mandalaybay.com; observer.co.uk; forbestraveler.com; foodmall.org; mirror.co.uk