Caviar on burgers and fried chicken? This is the woman to thank

You have Petra Higby to thank (or blame) for the idea of Hilda and Jesse’s signature Pancakes Without Boundaries, topped with blueberry-maple syrup and a heap of salted fish eggs. Recently sold as a $200 DIY brunch-at-home kit, the collaboration featured pancake mix from the Michelin-starred North Beach restaurant and 1 ounce of kaluga caviar from The Caviar Co., Higby’s company. In case you were wondering: It sold out.

This low-lux caviar application is on brand for Higby. Her company’s Tiburon lounge serves Champagne and caviar “drunchies” (drunk munchies) in which she offers up a grilled cheese sandwich with white sturgeon caviar and a blend of Tillamook cheddar and Texas-style queso (a nod to her upbringing in Lubbock), as well as a Hebrew National hot dog tucked into a Firebrand pan au lait bun with kaluga hybrid. A fan of the sweet-salty combo, she also offers creme fraiche ice cream with caviar.

In addition to selling caviar at The Caviar Co.’s Marin-based lounge and Union Street shop and headquarters, Higby has extended her brand deeply into Bay Area restaurants across the fancy-to-casual spectrum. The Caviar Co.’s fish eggs have appeared on A16’s pizza and been tossed with Itria’s spaghetti. Chef Jason Halverson of Hi Neighbor Hospitality Group (Trestle, the Vault) has made a parfait layered with caviar, savory waffles, creme fraiche, and egg salad. Ike Shehadeh of Ike’s Love & Sandwiches has added Higby’s fish eggs to a Wagyu beef hoagie served on a long john doughnut in lieu of bread.

What you don’t see much of is Higby’s caviar presented the old-fashioned way, with the precious preparation of teeny-weeny blini, creme fraiche, sieved egg, and minuscule chopped chives. This is intentional. While other Bay Area proprietors, such the California Caviar Company (where Higby spent two years learning the ropes), Tsar Nicolai, and Thomas Keller’s Regiis Ova have dabbled in the idea of caviar for the people, it’s Higby who has taken “casual caviar” to the next level — doggedly proselytizing the democratization of the traditionally pinkies-out product.

Her efforts have worked spectacularly. Since 2015, when she launched The Caviar Co. with her sister Saskia Bergstein, it has hosted a caviar bar at Paris Hilton’s wedding and secured a national “Crisps and Caviar collection” collab with Pringles that started when the two brands worked together at Coachella in 2023. Higby’s 15-person operation has consistently seen revenue grow 20% annually and has more than 250 regular restaurant accounts, including Frances, Saison, The Wild, Nightbird, and Bodega. 

Thanks to Higby’s influence, the caviar humblebrag seems to be everywhere these days. You’re as likely to see caviar as a punk-rock add-on to a smashburger at the counter-service Hamburger Project as you are to see it mixed into ranch and served with chicken nuggets at The Morris. The new Side A in the Mission is even dolloping caviar on “cheese fries” with mornay sauce. 

For restaurants, it’s an opportunity to raise the check average. For diners, it provides a giddy thrill and an “Instagram hopeful moment,” Higby says. So if you think it’s sane to order Dalida’s new off-menu brunch item — two battered-and-fried quail with an ounce of caviar for $158 — you might say you’ve been Higby’d.

On her website, Higby encourages her customers to “live the caviar lifestyle.” The swag selection follows her MO: There’s a caviar trucker cap, caviar crew socks, and a diamond-encrusted caviar-tin pendant designed by local jeweler Harwell Godfrey for a breath-sucking $10,500.  

Whether through millennial marketing genius or authentic experience, Higby, 35, seems to embody the caviar lifestyle. On her personal social media accounts, she posts videos of her towheaded children merrily shoveling caviar into their mouths as an after-school snack. She gently cajoles them into describing the flavor profile of the buttery white sturgeon variety ($100 an ounce) and the bright-orange trout roe (a more kid-friendly $14). She speaks of the healthful qualities of caviar as if it could just be whipped into a morning smoothie for a daily hit of omega-3s.

She met her husband, Alex Higby, a professional sailor, in 2013 at a party for the America’s Cup at a 60th-floor penthouse in the Millennium Tower. She was then working for the California Caviar Company. “[Alex had] just gotten a job with Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing, and he was like, ‘Why don’t you travel the world with me for The Ocean Race?” She accepted, because of course she did, and got a remote job working for Sterling Caviar, another local company (which merged with Tsar Nicolai at the end of 2024).

When she returned to the Bay Area, there wasn’t a full-time position at Sterling. So Higby decided to join forces with her sister, a CPA with a good business mind. The idea was to simply distribute Sterling’s white sturgeon caviar to chefs under their own label. “That’s why we just simply called ourselves The Caviar Co.,” Higby explains. “Initially, we just wanted to be under the radar.” But by 2017, when they opened the retail shop, she’d gotten the itch to do more — “to educate consumers directly.” A quiet little caviar company suddenly didn’t feel like enough. 

Higby has invited me to join her at her Tiburon lounge on a weekday afternoon. We sit at a sidewalk table. As she lets me dip into a sampling of four varieties of caviar, the Marin sun catches the stack of diamonds on her finger. 

Her family recently returned from Antigua, where her husband’s sailing team won the RORC Caribbean 600. She’s feeling a little sheepish about the truancy letter she received after taking her son out of school. With her long, blond hair, big blue eyes, and flashy hand-bling, she gives off a distinct air of caviar nonchalance. Yet she also comes off as a down-to-earth, smart, savvy businesswoman — and, honestly, kind of a fish geek. 

She can go deep explaining why some white sturgeon eggs are really dark. “It means that the fish was in one of its first gestational periods,” she says. “The lighter the eggs, the more valuable the caviar, because the fish is older and the caviar gets more decadent.” She rattles off sturgeon lineage like a Vladivostok deckhand: “Kaluga is native to the Amur River that borders China and Russia. So it’s like a river version of the beluga. That’s why you get the large eggs, because of the kaluga part of the family in there.”

She is a self-professed “solutions-oriented person,” admittedly a challenge right now: Though she’d like to expand into luxury markets across the country, the life of caviar wishes and Champagne dreams is looking a little shaky. Since 2005, the U.S. has made it illegal to import beluga, the prized and endangered wild sturgeon caught in the Caspian Sea. In fact, barring the eggs of some hackleback that swim wild in the Mississippi, most of the caviar we eat here comes from farms around the world — from Sacramento to Italy — that raise the massive prehistoric fish, which can live from 10 to 25 years until they’re ready to be “sacrificed” (the industry’s chosen word, not mine). Though some sturgeon are “milked,” a massaging method of removing the eggs, and kept alive, most meet their maker when it’s time to harvest the roe. There’s a reason caviar is expensive. 

As I’m polishing off the last of the kaluga hybrid — which comes from farmed sturgeon in China, the source of more than half the caviar consumed in the U.S. — I ask how she’s feeling about the Trump tariffs on Chinese goods. “There’s just so much unease,” she says, knowing her prices will have to go up. 

The idea of obtainable opulence might quickly become less obtainable, the concept of chicken nuggets and caviar a little less lighthearted. Should that happen, she’s confident she’ll come up with a solution. “It’s just a wait and see,” she said. “We’re on our toes and ready to pivot.”