Cultivated Salmon Hits US Menus, Testing a New Way to Eat Fish

After FDA safety clearance, cultivated salmon is now served in US restaurants, signaling a new commercial chapter for cell-cultured seafood

12 Dec 2025

For years cultivated seafood was something to peer at in laboratories and conference halls. Now it is being eaten. In a handful of American restaurants, diners can order salmon that has never swum. It was grown indoors, from animal cells, under tightly controlled conditions.

The fish comes from Wildtype, a start-up whose cell-cultured salmon has cleared a pre-market safety review by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The process is not genetic modification, nor is it fish farming. Cells are taken from a salmon and encouraged to multiply, producing flesh that looks and tastes familiar. The FDA’s clearance does not amount to a new rulebook for the industry. But it is enough to allow commercial service. That matters.

Wildtype is beginning with restaurants rather than supermarkets. Its salmon is appearing in curated settings such as Kann, a restaurant in Portland, and a small number of others. Chefs help frame the product as a premium ingredient with environmental appeal, not a scientific stunt.

This is a sensible bet. Restaurants offer a controlled environment: limited volumes, predictable demand and space to explain an unfamiliar idea. Many now-common foods, from sushi to plant-based meat, first gained acceptance in dining rooms before moving into grocery aisles.

The timing is favourable. America’s seafood industry is under strain. Wild fish stocks are under pressure, climate change disrupts supply, and consumers worry about cost and provenance. Cultivated seafood offers a different promise: year-round production, stable quality and clear origins, without reliance on oceans or farms.

Regulation, long a source of uncertainty, has begun to catch up. The FDA’s review shows that cultivated seafood can fit within existing food-safety rules. That should calm investors and encourage other firms to follow, even if many details remain unresolved.

Obstacles are obvious. Producing fish this way is still costly. Output is small. Scaling up will require new factories, patient capital and continued co-operation between regulators. Traditional fishing communities remain wary, and many consumers are unsure what to make of fish grown indoors.

Cultivated seafood will not displace conventional fish any time soon. But as an extra source of supply, its arrival on American menus suggests a food system testing new forms of resilience, quietly, one plate at a time.