Starting Tuesday, burger fans in Maine will be able to try the new and much touted plant-based burger that supposedly looks, tastes and even “bleeds” like real meat.
That’s when Andrew Chadwick, executive chef at Sea Glass, the restaurant at Inn by the Sea in Cape Elizabeth, will begin serving the Impossible veggie burger made by Impossible Foods, a Silicon Valley start-up that wants to upend the global meat-friendly food system.
According to the company, the burger is made of wheat, coconut oil, potatoes and heme – that last is a combination of soybean roots and genetically engineered yeast. Manufacturing the burger, the company says, uses 75 percent less water and requires 95 percent less land than a conventional burger, and generates 87 percent fewer greenhouse gases.
For now, the burger is available only in restaurants. About half of the 65 restaurants that serve it are in California, followed by Texas – cattle country – New York, Ohio, Michigan, Massachusetts, Illinois, Indiana and Nevada.
Prices are all over the map. At the B Spot in Indianapolis, for example, the Impossible Burger is $6.99, a dollar less than a burger made with real beef. The Hopdoddy Burger Bar in Austin charges $14, about twice the cost of its classic meat burger. And Momofuku Nishi in New York City sells it for $15, with a side of fries, at lunch.
Rauni Kew, spokeswoman and green program manager for the Inn by the Sea, said the Impossible burger will be available at lunch and dinner, at the bar, and through room service. It will cost $18, the same price as the inn’s regular burger, and be served with fries or some other side.
She said the inn heard the burger was coming to Maine soon, and “we were interested and jumped on it, and asked for it.”
“We’re only getting exclusivity for a short time,” she said.
Meredith Goad can be contacted at 791-6332 or at:
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