What if the burger on your plate was never part of a living animal? No slaughterhouse, no feedlot, no emissions from livestock. Just real meat, grown from cells in a bioreactor. It sounds like science fiction. Honestly, until very recently, it basically was.
But something shifted. Quietly, in a handful of cities around the world, real people started sitting down at real restaurants and ordering real cultivated meat. Not a plant-based patty. Not a soy substitute. Actual meat, grown without slaughter. The question is no longer “will this ever happen?” It already has. Here’s where it’s happening right now.
1. Singapore: The City That Started It All
On December 2, 2020, the Singapore Food Agency approved the “chicken bites” produced by Eat Just for commercial sale, marking the first time a cultivated meat product passed the safety review of a food regulator anywhere in the world. That single decision changed everything. Singapore didn’t just dip a toe in. It cannonballed.
Since 2020, Good Meat has been producing and selling its chicken in a campaign-style model, offering opportunities to try cultivated chicken in fine dining establishments, via food delivery apps, at beloved hawker stalls, and in the bistro at Huber’s Butchery. Think about that range for a second. From Michelin-level fine dining to hawker stalls. That’s a city genuinely trying to make this food accessible.
In May 2024, Good Meat launched its retail cultivated chicken product, Good Meat 3, at Huber’s Butchery in Singapore, making it the world’s first and only retail launch of a cultivated meat product. In April 2024, Australian start-up Vow also obtained Singaporean approval for its cultured quail, while Dutch start-up Meatable announced it would be introducing its cultivated pork sausages in several Singapore restaurants later in 2024. Singapore is not slowing down.
Singapore’s Islamic Religious Council declared cultivated meat halal in 2024, expanding the potential consumer base in the multiethnic country. That’s a meaningful signal. Broader access, broader acceptance. Let’s be real: this city is running circles around the rest of the world right now.
2. San Francisco: America’s First Taste
Approval from the USDA was received by Upside Foods and Good Meat, both for cultivated chicken, in June 2023, making the United States only the second country in the world to permit the commercial sale of cultivated meat. The honor of serving it first fell to one of the most culinarily adventurous cities on earth.
On August 4, 2023, Bar Crenn in San Francisco began serving Upside Foods’ cultivated chicken as part of a six-course meal, marking the first time members of the public could sign up to purchase cultivated meat in the US. Chef Dominique Crenn, a three-Michelin-star chef who had already removed conventional meat from her menu in 2018, was the one doing the cooking. If that’s not a statement, I don’t know what is.
Fine dining’s experiment with lab-grown meat has since come to an end, at least for now. San Francisco’s Bar Crenn is no longer serving Upside Foods’ cell-cultivated chicken, after the two entities had teamed up to offer the poultry at Bar Crenn in the summer of 2023. It was a limited run, not a permanent fixture. Still, San Francisco holds its place in history as the city where Americans first paid for a plate of cultivated meat.
3. Washington, D.C.: The Political Capital Joins the Plate
Good Meat’s cultivated chicken debuted at Chef José Andrés’ China Chilcano restaurant in Washington D.C. on July 6, 2023. That timing matters. The USDA had only just cleared the way for cultivated meat sales, and within weeks, one of the most high-profile chefs in the country was already plating it for diners. That’s not a coincidence. That’s momentum.
Good Meat used to be available at the José Andrés-owned Washington D.C. restaurant China Chilcano, but the eatery passed its reservations for the tasting menu featuring the cultivated chicken in September 2023. Here’s the honest truth: availability in both U.S. cities was short-lived and heavily restricted. Upside Foods limited its Bar Crenn servings to just one day a month, serving only 17 consumers at a time. These were pilots, not product launches. Important distinction.
In January 2025, Upside Foods partnered with meat distributor Pat LaFrieda to introduce cultivated chicken products, including shredded chicken and sausage, through traditional food service channels, utilizing LaFrieda’s restaurant network to incorporate Upside’s products into established recipes. The D.C. and San Francisco experiments, brief as they were, clearly laid groundwork for what came next.
4. Tel Aviv: The Beef Capital Steps Up
In January 2024, the Ministry of Health in Israel granted regulatory approval for cultured beef to Aleph Farms. This was not chicken. This was beef. Cultivated, cell-grown beef. For a country that is deeply invested in food technology and innovation, this approval was enormous, and Tel Aviv sits right at the center of that ecosystem.
Aleph Farms’ flagship product is a steak designed to simulate the experience of cooking and eating beef, and the company is developing cultivated meat that promises more than ninety percent reductions in land use, greenhouse gas emissions, and pollution compared with conventional meat. Honestly, those numbers are staggering when you sit with them for a moment. It’s not just a food novelty. It’s an environmental argument you can eat.
Aleph Farms’ Aleph Cuts brand of cultivated steaks was approved in Israel, although it is not yet widely available. Marcus Samuelsson invested in Aleph Cuts’ lab-grown steaks, saying he would offer them at one of his restaurants once they gain broader regulatory approval. The trajectory is clear. Tel Aviv is not waiting around.
5. Amsterdam and the European Frontier: A City on the Brink
In April 2024, Dutch start-up Meatable hosted the first legally approved public proof-of-concept tasting of cultured meat in the European Union, a sausage, following ad hoc approval by a national expert committee under a newly introduced Dutch code of practice, with the event attracting significant national and international media attention. It was a sausage, not a burger, but the significance was enormous. Europe had, for a single approved moment, tasted the future.
In July 2024, French startup Gourmey became the first company in Europe to apply for full regulatory approval at the European Food Safety Authority, followed by pioneer Mark Post’s Mosa Meat from the Netherlands in January 2025. The wheels are turning in Europe, even if they’re turning slowly. Europe is proving the biggest hurdle for lab-grown meat’s progress, with the primary issue being significant pushback from some nations.
Amsterdam is the beating heart of that European push. With Meatable headquartered there and Mosa Meat just down the road in Maastricht, the Netherlands has positioned itself as the continent’s cultivated meat capital. It’s hard to say for sure when a full commercial launch happens there, but the question is when, not if.
The Big Picture: A $25 Billion Question
Here’s the thing that makes all of this feel genuinely different from other food trends. The money behind it is serious, and the market projections are eye-opening. If consumers take to these products, the market for cultivated meat could reach $25 billion by 2030, according to McKinsey. That’s not a startup blog post. That’s one of the world’s most respected consulting firms putting a number on it.
In less than a decade, companies have been able to reduce the production costs of cultivated meat by ninety-nine percent. Consider that the first cultivated burger, made in 2013, cost $325,000. The trajectory from $325,000 to a retail freezer pack in Singapore priced at roughly five dollars in U.S. terms is, frankly, mind-bending. That’s not incremental progress. That’s a technological leap.
With more than 150 companies operating in the cultivated meat sector worldwide, progress is bound to come in fits and starts, as has been the case in clean energy, electric vehicles, and other emerging technologies. Research studies show that younger consumers, as well as vegetarians and vegans, are more likely to be interested in trying cultured meat, with one study finding that consumers aged 18 to 34 were more likely to try it than older consumers. The generational shift in attitude is already underway. It just needs the supply chain to catch up.
There are real headwinds too. Both Alabama and Florida passed bills banning the sale of cultivated meat as a means to defend the cattle industry. Cultivated meat still faces a range of challenges, from cost reductions to regulatory approval to consumer and farmer perceptions. Progress in food technology has never moved in a straight line. Think of how long it took for organic food to move from fringe to mainstream. Cultivated meat may follow that same slow, stubborn arc.
The cities above are not just interesting footnotes in a science story. They are the proving grounds for something that could fundamentally change how humanity feeds itself. Whether you find that exciting or unsettling probably says a lot about you. Would you order a cultivated burger if it appeared on the menu tonight? Tell us in the comments.
