It’s a disappointment, that’s for sure. Ever since The Parker hotel in Palm Springs came up with the $1,000 omelette, served with lobster and 280g of caviar, I’ve been looking forward to LA’s riposte. Perhaps Spago in Beverly Hills would simply pour an entire swimming pool of caviar for its diners, and allow them to wallow in it while dressed in edible blini swimsuits?

Alas no. LA’s best effort was this: a hot dog, all beef and a foot long, that sells at a place downtown for $15. “Who has the bread for a $15 hot dog?” read one of many headlines this weekend.

Who indeed — apart from, well, everyone? (This is a state where Forbes magazine counts 92 billionaires.) Has LA given up? Has it become so tired of its outrageousness that all it can offer us is this muscled-up wiener for the price of a half-decent glass of Napa? Even the Japanese are trying harder: last year they created the world’s longest hot dog, which measured 60 metres and nestled in a 60.3metre bun. Now that’s a sausage of note. Surely, if LA was going to produce a serious contender — a $1,000 omelette-killer, perhaps — it should at least be visible from space.

Keeping a brave face is Steve Lopez, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. “A hamburger at that price [$15] would be an obscenity,” he wrote indulgently on Sunday. I can understand his loyalty, but fear he may not have grasped the concept of inflation. In New York, Steve, they’re serving a sirloin burger stuffed with braised short ribs, foie gras and black truffles, and guess how much it costs? Try $99. Even the British tourists, who feel like millionaires thanks to the dollar’s weekly bloodying on the currency markets, have to think. But a $15 burger? Please. I had one for breakfast.

There is a reverse price war of gourmet junk food going on out there, and the aim is Total Headline Domination. Never in the field of hot-dog technology has so much been at stake by so many. Intelligence suggests that Japan has already deployed its $1.65 million, diamond-encrusted fruitcake. And in Britain, Harvey Nichols is testing a $51,200 cocktail, served with its own security detail and an 18-carat white-gold ring.

There’s even a lone operative in Burnley, Lancashire, who’s developed a $16,000 pie. It’s made with beef fillet, Chinese mushrooms, truffles and two bottles of 1982 Château Mouton Rothschild. “It’s a very sophisticated pie,” explained its creator, Kevin Berkins — and who would dare to ignore such a claim?

Just as I was losing hope, however, I stumbled upon a report of an auction held last month at which a single brown M&M was sold to an anonymous collector for $1,500. A single M&M! The value of the sweet was derived largely from the fact it had floated around the cabin of SpaceShipOne during its privately funded near-earth orbit in 2004. Alas, the auction took place in Bell Canyon, which is in Ventura County, a few miles over the LA county line.

Still, it’s a start.

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