If you want to eat an $8 cheeseburger, you will have no trouble finding one. If you don't want to try a restaurant's attempt to "elevate" a burger --- and I don't blame you --- don't order it. It's not all a scam. The $25 burger is its own genre, and there is a market for it.

We had a story a year or so back about the best cheeseburger in the country (according to one respected reviewer, whose reviews generated lines around the block for places). It was in the $8 genre, and people were upset!

We had a lot of up market burger restaurants opened in the UK a few years ago. That trend seems to have passed now and many are closing.

I'm not very cultured so I had to google what fois gras is.

Enlarged duck liver, typically liver 10x larger than normal, usually through force feeding. Banned in some countries.

I'm surprised in the current age of being socially aware that this seems to be a trending food?

I'm not sure it's trending so much as one the most prized ingredients in fine dining; a cliche, like a perigord truffle. The ducks and geese harvested for foie are better treated than any chicken you are going to buy at Whole Foods.

https://www.seriouseats.com/the-physiology-of-foie-why-foie-...

It's..."foie gras".