Lab-grown meat on the menu at restaurant in Israel, and diners are impressed with taste of chicken burgers and rice rolls
- Burgers and minced meat rice rolls made from lab-grown chicken meat impress tasters in Israel
- To produce the ‘cultured’ meat, cells grown from a cultivated egg are fed a plant-based liquid in an eco-friendly production process
It looks like chicken and tastes like chicken, but diners in Israel are tucking into laboratory-grown “meat” that scientists claim is an environmentally friendly way to feed the world’s growing population.
In a small restaurant in a nondescript building in a science park in the central Israeli town of Ness Ziona, diners munched burgers and minced meat rice rolls made with “cultured chicken” – meat grown in the adjacent SuperMeat production site.
“It was delicious, the flavour was great,” said Gilly Kanfi, a self-described “meat eater” from Tel Aviv, who had signed up for the meal months in advance. “If I didn’t know, I would have thought it was a regular chicken burger.”
The Chicken, as the eatery is called, hosts periodical test meals to generate customer feedback while waiting for regulatory approval. The restaurant’s dark and elegant interior is framed by large windows looking onto a bright-lit laboratory, where technicians monitor large stainless-steel fermentation vats.
“This is the first time in the world people can actually have a taste of a cultivated meat product, while observing the production and the manufacturing process,” said Ido Savir, SuperMeat’s chief executive.