Newfangled plant-based meat, cultivated meat’s cousin, has already made it to the kitchen table. Chicken made by Upside Foods, which launched in 2015, is now available at the Michelin-starred Bar Crenn in San Francisco, and will be headed to more restaurants soon. Within the past decade, cultivated meat has gone from science-fictional to hyper-expensive to market-ready, fueled by billions of dollars of start-up spending. This kind of meat is the future, or at least part of the future. The companies that make this animal flesh call it “cultivated” or “cultured” meat the more common adjective outside the industry is “lab grown.” (The cells that I ate came from eggs, not from birds, by the way-so consider your next question answered.) To be specific, it is what happens when you take a chicken’s cells, place them in a vat filled with a slurry of nutrients and amino acids, let them multiply, wash them, chill them, shape them, and cook them. Is it chicken? It is chicken more than it is anything else. I put a small amount in my mouth, chew carefully, and taste, well, not much.

I take a piece and squish it, observing it bounce back and dampen my hands. I cut the meat, the serrations on the knife shredding it into strings. After a few minutes, he places the dish before me. “Kind of a classic,” Davila says.ĭavila works for Upside Foods, a start-up disrupting the world of animal proteins from its base in Berkeley, California. He lets it rest, chars some tomatoes and scallions, and throws together a beurre-blanc sauce. “Today, you’re going to be having our whole-muscle chicken filet,” Daniel Davila tells me, searing the morsel. T he chef presents me with a nugget of raw meat, tinged yellowish gray, then takes it back and drops it in a pan. This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday.

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