It looks like a salmon crudo: thin slices of fatty yet delicate fish, crunchy vegetables, and a bright, acidic sauce. But no animal was killed to make it.

When the cultivated salmon arrives at the table, it looks like something you’d find at any good omakase counter. And that’s the goal—restaurants are currently the singular entry point for encountering what is also known as “lab-grown meat,” a.k.a. chicken, pork, beef, and seafood cultivated from cells. In kitchens around the country, chefs are translating this novelty into dishes that aren’t too challenging to get behind. The bigger hurdle is turning that first bite into lasting demand.

Chef Dominique Crenn debuted cell-cultivated chicken in 2023 at Bar Crenn in San Francisco. José Andrés’s China Chilcano in Washington, DC, followed suit, with limited run, reservation-only dinners priced from $70 to $150 per person. Eater San Francisco noted the meat’s flavor “evoked the kind of nostalgic, delicate meatiness proper chicken should provide.” The Washingtonian’s Jessica Sidman said it felt like “a wannabe,” while Soleil Ho of the San Francisco Chronicle questioned “the whole premise of the project to recreate meat.”

After mixed results from these initial high-profile tastings, many start-up companies retreated behind closed doors amid funding difficulties and political pushback from states. (Seven states currently ban cell-cultured meat.) But despite the challenges of the last three years, chefs are still exploring new forms of cultivated meat and seafood.

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“There's not enough seafood in the ocean to feed everyone who wants it. We need a less environmentally harmful alternative,” says James Beard Award–winning chef Renee Erickson of Seattle’s The Walrus and The Carpenter. She began serving cultivated salmon in August 2025 at The Walrus and The Carpenter to counter environmental costs and quality issues related to farmed fish.

“This felt like a way to offset the need for endless amounts of farmed salmon,” Erickson says.

By rerouting mass-market demand, Erickson believes cultivated seafood could also give “wild fish and wild fishermen more space to survive.”

Last year several restaurants partnered with Wildtype, the first FDA-approved cultivated seafood company. Diners could taste cultivated salmon at chef-driven restaurants like Kann in Portland, Oregon; intimate omakase experiences like Robin in San Francisco and Otoko in Austin (before it was pulled from the menu after Texas banned cultivated products); and at 32-year-old neighborhood establishment Kingfisher in Tucson, which serves up to 350 covers a night.

Several participating chefs echoed Erickson’s enthusiasm for the category, particularly the idea that cultivated seafood isn’t meant to replace conventional options but rather provide a more sustainable alternative. And chefs only added cultivated salmon to their menus once it met their taste standards. Robin chef and owner Adam Tortosa and Kingfisher Bar & Grill chef and co-owner Jacki Kuder both note how the flavor of cultivated salmon closely matches conventional salmon despite some differences in texture.

“It’s a bit lighter in flavor, but has those fatty notes,” Tortosa says. “It’s definitely tender, but the way that it breaks apart in your mouth is not exactly like salmon.” Due to its chewier bite, most chefs slice it thinly and add crunchy fruits or vegetables and pops of acid. Chefs can only serve it raw or lightly smoked since its cellular structure cannot hold up under high heat.

While there are no comprehensive studies comparing the environmental impacts of cultivated versus conventional seafood, alternatives like Wildtype could avoid ocean pollution and overfishing, which have caused losses in biodiversity and destroyed the ocean’s resiliency.

For novel products like these, education matters. Wildtype co-founders Justin Kolbeck and Aryé Elfenbein invited chefs to their headquarters in San Francisco and then went to the restaurants during early days of service, providing FAQ sheets that informed how chefs label the product on menus. For Kolbeck and Elfenbein, restaurants were the ideal space to start a dialogue.

At Robin, every guest is asked if they’d like to try cultivated salmon during their omakase meal. While some diners explicitly request Wildtype salmon in advance, about 50% opt in after learning what it is. The overarching reaction is positive, with curious diners trying a riff on bagels and lox made with cold-smoked cultivated salmon with confit cherry tomatoes and green onions.

At Kingfisher Bar & Grill, a higher-volume restaurant with slightly older clientele, setting expectations is important. The menu includes a description explaining why they chose to serve cultivated salmon and highlights the kitchen’s environmental motivation by calling it “Wildtype Sustainable Salmon Crudo.” Diners also receive the FAQ sheet to fully explain what the product is once they order either the cultivated salmon crudo, full of crunchy green apple and a citrusy sauce, or choose it as an add-on for poke, a decade-long staple on the menu.

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“People just want the story behind it,” Kuder says. “I've had mostly positive feedback and I’ve received a couple of handwritten cards thanking us for having a sustainable option and that’s really important to me.” Given this reaction, Kuder plans to debut another dish at Kingfisher this year with Wildtype’s next iteration of their cultivated salmon.

Beyond stand-alone cuts of meat or seafood, chefs are serving cultivated products in different ways to help bring novel ingredients to the plate faster.

At five dinner events at Fiorella in San Francisco, chef and co-owner Brandon Gillis served Mission Barns’ cultivated bacon and meatballs, which are hybrid products made with cultivated pork fat and plant proteins. Gillis served the meatballs in two ways: seared and braised in a pomodoro sauce with cavatelli and deconstructed, mixed with pine nuts, currants, a fennel-onion-garlic sofrito, in a tomato agrodolce over polenta.

“The fat was really flavorful and had a great mouthfeel to it,” Gillis said. “Cooking was fairly seamless but there’s less forgiveness with it. You have to be very on top of the timing.”

“I saw a lot of potential in the product, especially if [Mission Barns] can get to scale,” he says, noting that the level of adoption is what matters in order to have a real impact. Cultivated fat may be easier to produce in larger quantities and may sidestep the sensory expectations that come with whole cuts of meat.

Getting cultivated products onto the plate is still not easy.

While Kolbeck and Elfenbein have never missed a shipment, scaling novel products comes with challenges––from obstacles with ingredient sourcing to issues with packaging––that limit how much is available and how often it can appear. This means diners encounter cultivated proteins as add-ons or a single dish, often priced between $22 and $33. While those costs are typical at these restaurants, cultivated products aren’t fully integrated across menus which can make it harder to sustain continued interest.

Still, chefs work within supply limits, introducing the product in deliberate ways and building familiarity one dish at a time.

“That’s why we’re chefs. We want people to try new delicious things and experience moments that they’ve never had before,” Kuder says. “That’s part of the beauty of the industry and the job.”