Here's What the First Cell-Cultivated Chicken Dish on a US Menu Will Look Like

Chef Dominique Crenn will feature Upside Food's cell-cultured chicken in the first meat dish at Bar Crenn in nearly four years.

Earlier this week, chef Dominique Crenn received a shipment of chicken at her San Francisco restaurant, Bar Crenn. That sounds like a near-daily occurrence for almost any chef, but this was a noteworthy delivery for a couple of reasons: first, it will be the first poultry that Crenn has served since she decided to make all three of her restaurants meat-free in 2019, and the product Crenn received is also the first-ever order of cell-cultured chicken (sometimes referred to as "cultivated" or “lab-grown”) to be sold in the United States.

Crenn has partnered with California startup Upside Foods, and will be the first chef to add its cell-cultured chicken to a restaurant menu. Crenn’s chicken delivery is one more milestone in what has been a landmark month for Upside. In mid-June, it received label approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and just last week, the agency gave Upside a Grant of Inspection (GOI), which gave the company the official OK to start selling its chicken products, labeled as "cell-cultivated," to restaurants, chefs, and consumers.

Both Upside and Chef Crenn have been preparing for that big day, and planning for Upside Food’s chicken to become the centerpiece of the first meat dish Crenn will bring back to her menu. “Working with Chef Crenn has been a delight,” Upside Food’s chief operating officer Amy Chen told Food & Wine. “She's oftentimes in our test kitchen working alongside our food developers trying out new recipes and riffing on different recipes. It’s been a joy to have her in our orbit, and to be inspired by a three-Michelin-star chef. Watching her cook is a real gift.”

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Crenn originally met Uma Valeti, Upside Food’s founder and chief executive, because he was a regular at Atelier Crenn. “I also had a chance to get to know him personally, along with his vision, his sensitivity and his narrative,” she told Food & Wine. “His vision was clear, thoughtful and uplifting for the world. He understood the need to change the food system — for inspiring and noble reasons. I connected with that.”

Cell-cultured meat, according to the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Serive guidelines, is derived from live animal stem cells which are grown and multiplied, eventually becoming muscle, fat, or connective tissue (and sometimes given additional structure using soy, gelatin, or other proteins to replicate the texture of the intended meat). And, perhaps most importantly to meat alternative advocates, the process forgoes the need to slaughter any animals.

Chef Crenn was given an early chance to taste Upside Food’s cell-cultivated chicken, and became a true believer after that. “The taste and quality were also what I was focused on,” she continued. “To my surprise and excitement, the chicken was juicy, delicious and better than any supermarket chicken breast I had eaten. I was sold.”

Chen said that Chef Crenn worked through “a number of different ideas” as she designed a dish that would showcase the chicken. “What's really beautiful about the process that Chef Crenn goes through is that she imagines not only the recipe and the food, but the plating, the shape, and the aesthetic at the same time,” she explained. “She would come back [to the Upside Food test kitchen] with her chefs and some new ideas. She continued to refine it until ultimately we landed on something that everyone thought was spectacular.”

That “spectacular” dish, to be served at Bar Crenn beginning on an as-yet-undisclosed date, is built around Upside Food's chicken, which is coated in a tempura batter infused with Recado Negro, a charred chile paste from Mexico’s Yucatan region. The chicken is then fried, lightly drizzled with a burnt chili aioli, and garnished with edible flowers and greens from Crenn’s Bleu Belle Farm.

The dish will be served in a black ceramic vessel that was handmade in Mexico and delicately painted with both Mexican motifs and Crenn’s own logo. When the lid is removed, dry ice will billow out — this is a presentation, after all — and then each diner will be encouraged to pick the chicken up and eat it with their hands.

“It was important to be able to showcase the chicken, and to recognize that this is a whole-cut piece of chicken,” Chen said. “So that is featured prominently in the recipe, and at the same time, it’s surrounded by different ingredients from her farm. [The recipe] really fit into that broader story about sustainability and artisanship and stewardship. Everything about it is just exquisite.”

After months of planning and prepping for this recipe to become a reality, and restaurant guests to get their first taste of Crenn’s newest creation, suffice it to say that everyone involved was very excited when that aforementioned box of chicken was shipped out earlier this week. “Chef Crenn was like ‘OK, can I get the printout [of the invoice],” Chen said. “We told her ‘Oh yeah, we’ll work on a printout.”

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