Would you serve something that tastes like foie gras, costs the same but was created in a lab?

Will traditional foie gras ever be a thing of the past?

Last week, we put out a poll asking you, chefs, whether you would include foie gras on your menus.

One thing was for sure: whether for or against it, people feel strongly about serving (or not serving) foie gras. 

Out of the 1,396 respondents, 63.96 percent said they were in favour of including it, while 36.03 were against.

There are reasonable arguments on both sides:

Firstly, you cook for the customer, not the chef; you have to follow consumer trends to progress as a chef, but consumer demand for foie gras varies: while some restaurants that serve it sell it in vast quantities, others who have dared to put it on the menu have suffered such bad backlash that they have been forced to take it off.

It tastes delicious, but so do a lot of other ingredients which may not call for such a cruel production process.

It is possible to make so-called humane foie gras, but it doesn’t taste the same, apparently. 

While the less empathetic among you ask what other purpose a duck might serve, others won’t touch it because it is effectively diseased liver (and as those of you who’ve had to prep it know all too well, it doesn’t have the most appealing smell either).

Foie gras is a culinary tradition dating back to the Egyptian era, but it is truly part of France’s culinary heritage – not the UK’s – and thus it is harder to justify on those grounds.

Foie gras isn’t exactly healthy but then again, if you offer diet-friendly, dietary-friendly dishes, logic has it that you should cater for people who aren’t out to eat a salad too. 

All in all, while most of you voted in favour of serving foie gras, the justifications to do so – other than it tasting delicious – were quite sparse.

 

But what if I told you you could have your cake and eat it? 

A company called Foie Royale, launched six months ago, claims to have created an ethical alternative to foie gras - which tastes just as good as the real thing and costs a similar price.

Don't panic, it's not faux-meat: it still uses duck and geese livers, but the birds are raised in open spaces, they aren't  force-fed, nor are they encouraged to gorge -  as is the case of other alleged "ethical" foie gras products.

Instead, the company is spearheading a method that involves restructuring the animals' cell structures to create a product which looks and tastes like foie gras. 

Time for a biology lesson: as explained by managing director of Foie Royale, Mike Logut, liver cells are 4,000 times smaller than skin cells, which is what allows their flavour to penetrate our tongue when we taste it.

By enlarging a bird's liver from its original 50-60 grams to 500-600 grams through gorging, you are increasing the yield of the flavoursome liver, but you are effectively creating a diseased organ. 

Instead, founder of Foie Royale Joeri Groot, working in collaboration with the German institute for food technology (DIL) and fellow scientist Nino Terjung, devised a method whereby the birds' fatty skin cells are smashed up and divided to a similar size as the liver cells, then mixed with the liver cells to create a product that tastes like foie gras. 

The animals (of which there are approximately 15,000 on each of the company's 40 farms) are owned by family-run Meyer, in Germany, where they are raised for their meat. The company's reputation is based on the high ethical standards to which it holds itself.  

If, as Mike Logut claims, the product tastes just as good as the real thing - and, he said it does, as the product has been taste-tested against Rougié foie gras and received higher ratings - it should be a no-brainer. But will chefs get behind it?

"I think at the end of the day, you have foie gras, the decision is do you want to use it, yes or no."

"Suddenly now there's an alternative."

In the months since the company started selling Foie Royale, more than 500 chefs have endorsed the product across the UK-  including Lewtrenchard Manor head chef Tom Browning - as have at least 10 Michelin-starred chefs in the Netherlands, including Jonnie Boer.

Foie Royale was even served to the French Ambassador and Michel Escoffier at the Goût de France event in March this year. Though the Foie Royale founder says they very much enjoyed the flavour, he joked: "I was advised that I wasn't to make too much noise about the fact that it was German." 

Despite a higher production cost than traditional foie gras, the company has kept its prices within the same range - assumedly because no matter the moral high ground it would give them, chefs are unlikely to pay a higher price than they would for foie gras. 

The company is limited in its ability to upscale production; firstly, because it relies on using the bi-product of Meyer's birds - doing so themselves for the sake of a 60g liver would not be viable, and secondly because turning to another farmer would mean to lose control over the high welfare standards in which they are raised.

But for Logut, becoming a behemoth of the foie gras industry isn't the objective.

"This is never about trying to be as big as the big French companies - it's about putting something on the market which allows people to eat the product and if we've accomplished that, then bloody brilliant." 

What do you say chefs?  Would you put 'faux-gras' on your menus?