French restaurateur and Michelin-starred chef Laurent Manrique is teaming up with vegan seafood startup Aqua Cultured Meals to good the flavour, texture, colour, and culinary attraction of the startup’s whole-muscle lower vegan tuna, whitefish, calamari, shrimp, and scallops.
Since its founding in 2020, Aqua Cultured Meals has been creating revolutionary know-how that permits for the manufacturing of animal-free seafood utilizing proprietary microbial fermentation processes that don’t use any animal inputs, genetic altering, or modification.
The startup makes use of mycelium (the basis programs of mushrooms) which permits it to retain naturally occurring fiber, protein, and different micronutrients.
Aqua Cultured Meals
Earlier this 12 months, Aqua Cultured Meals raised $5.5 million in seed funding to convey its ultra-realistic seafood options to market. It’s utilizing the funding to equip its new facility, scale up manufacturing, add key expertise, and broaden its roster of restaurant and foodservice retailers for product introductions in 2024.
The startup has already executed its first beta testing with shoppers and had “super suggestions,” in accordance with Aqua Cultured Meals.
Earlier than launching its seafood, nevertheless, Aqua Cultured Meals desires to make sure it’s one of the best it may be. “Each day we’re on the lookout for methods to really make our product distinctive and we realized that with the intention to obtain that mission, we needed to encompass ourselves with one of the best cooks on the earth who’re as obsessive about style as we’re,” Anne Palermo, Aqua Cultured Meals co-founder and CEO, tells VegNews.
Perfecting vegan tuna, shrimp, and scallops
The partnership with Manrique happened considerably serendipitously. “Chef Laurent’s son discovered about our firm whereas doing analysis at his job, after which he linked us along with his father,” Aqua Cultured Meals co-founder and CGO Brittany Chibe tells VegNews. The top aim is to good the merchandise in order that high cooks—identical to Manrique—around the globe need to use Aqua Cultured Meals merchandise of their dishes.
Curiously, Manrique was beforehand the company govt chef of Aqua, an upscale seafood restaurant in San Francisco that had no earlier relation to Aqua Cultured Meals. At Aqua, he was well-known for his tuna tartare and earned two Michelin stars in 2006, and once more in 2007 and 2008.
Aqua Cultured Meals
Upon his departure in 2009, the restaurant misplaced its Michelin standing and later closed in 2010. Since 2005, Manrique has additionally owned Café de la Presse, a French restaurant in San Francisco.
As culinary advisor to the vegan seafood startup, Manqrique is bringing his many years’ value of expertise to the Aqua Cultured Meals group with a aim to good its merchandise for a January 2024 business launch of vegan tuna, shrimp, and scallops.
However what motivated a standard chef to work with a vegan firm? A ardour to avoid wasting the ocean, in accordance with Manrique.
“I’m all the time looking to study extra and I like to find new merchandise. Once I first discovered about Aqua, I used to be extremely intrigued and excited by [its] choices and fervour to avoid wasting the ocean,” Manrique tells VegNews.
“Once I first tried [its] product, I used to be past impressed with the look, texture, and moisture of the product; a lot so, I despatched footage to some cooks who have been additionally in disbelief,” Manrique says.
Vegan seafood to avoid wasting the oceans
As a part of the partnership with Aqua Cultured Meals, Manrique shall be working with the corporate’s product growth group in individual. “The aim is to get Aqua’s merchandise as shut as potential to the actual factor,” Manrique says.
“On my first go to to work with the group in Chicago, I introduced in actual diver scallops and contemporary tuna to work facet by facet,” he says. “Now that we’ve set the requirements for every product and the way it ought to style and appear and feel, the group sends me new variations of the product to style and supply suggestions.”
Aqua Cultured Meals
In the end, Manrique believes in Aqua Cultured Meals’s mission to assist save the oceans. “I’m not a vegan, however as a chef, I’m acutely aware about how we’re feeding our kids,” Manrique says. “After being concerned in high-end seafood eating places for a few years, I spotted that sooner or later the ocean will be unable to offer seafood for future generations.”
Manrique believes there’ll all the time be a requirement for seafood, however the best way it’s produced might want to change. “We are going to by no means not have seafood on menus, however the best way I see the longer term is that actual seafood will grow to be a uncommon delicacy,” Manrique says. “It is very important produce other choices and to present individuals a alternative. We need to convey these choices.”
For the most recent vegan information, learn: