It tastes like chicken, too, which is surprising considering that it looks and smells like chicken.
The fact that the piece of meat in front of me is not from a farm would never have crossed your mind. A few miles away, in a lab on an industrial estate, is where it was created.
I'm currently eating at Huber's Butchery and Bistro in Singapore, which is the only eatery in the world to serve meat that has allegedly been raised in a lab.
The owner of the restaurant calls the customer feedback "phenomenal.".
Eat Just, a California-based company that created the meat, claims that it is morally righteous, environmentally friendly, and tastes great. The industry is receiving enormous investment, but it's future as anything more than a novelty is seriously in doubt.
Since the first lab-grown burger, which only cost $330,000 (£263,400) to produce, was unveiled in London in 2013, dozens of businesses from all over the world have entered the race to market low-cost cultivated meat.
Since Singapore is the only nation in the world that permits the sale of lab-grown meat, only Eat Just has been able to get its product approved for general consumption. In December 2020, Singaporean regulators gave the company's chicken the go-ahead.
However, since that time, things seem to have stalled. In 2021, cultivated chicken nuggets were momentarily offered on the menu at a private members' club.
This year, Huber's began selling chicken sandwiches and chicken pasta dishes to the general public, though only once a week and with a limited number of seating options. That partnership was terminated after a few months.
According to Eat Just CEO Josh Tetrick, who spoke to the BBC from San Francisco, "Cultivated meat is real meat, but you don't have to slaughter an animal.". In the future, he claims, "eating this way makes sense.".
Cultivated meat is real meat, as opposed to plant-based alternatives. Cells are extracted from an animal and fed nutrients like proteins, sugars, and fats as part of the process.
The cells are then placed in a sizable steel bioreactor that serves as a fermentation tank and given time to divide and grow.
The substance is "harvested" from the bioreactor four to six weeks later. To give it the proper shape and texture, some vegetable protein is added, followed by molding, cooking, and 3-D printing.
On my plate of orecchiette pasta, the resulting strips of deep-fried chicken tasted just like the real thing, albeit a little processed. The kind of chicken you might get at a fast-food joint, perhaps.
Italian student Caterina exclaims, "It's meat - it's perfect!" she came here specifically to try the raised chicken. Caterina claims she would consume this despite normally abstaining from meat due to environmental concerns.
Serving the chicken with pasta, which is uncommon in Italy, was her only criticism.
One more diner from Singapore claims to have been taken aback by how much it resembled actual meat.
He declares, "It's real.". "I have no idea where it came from. Cost would be my only worry. ".
The price of the chicken pasta dish I ordered, S$18.50 ($13.70; £11), is significantly reduced when compared to the current price of raising the meat.
Eat Just won't disclose the exact costs associated with producing its farm-raised chicken, but at the moment the company's Singaporean production facility can only produce 2kg (4.4lb) or 3kg per week.
You can get an idea of the scope of the task at hand by contrasting that with the 4,000–5,000 kg of conventional chicken sold each week at Huber's alone. In order to avoid losing money on every chicken piece, they will simply need to drastically increase production.
Eat Just gave me a tour of its brand-new, multi-million dollar production facility in Singapore, which it hopes will open in 2019. The company claims that it has already reduced costs by 90 percent since 2018.
The two 1,320 gallon (6,000 liter) bioreactors made of shiny steel are undoubtedly a declaration of intent, but in actuality, they are a very small portion of the millions of tonnes of chicken that would have to be produced to match the cost of slaughtered chicken.
The industry begs for patience, but many scientists have had it with waiting.
Ricardo San Martin, co-director of the Alt: Meat Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, says that the narrative put forth by these businesses is very compelling.
But, he continues, "that narrative must be compared to the science.". "Do the math and review every scientific paper written by individuals without a stake in the outcome, and you'll see that the solution is obvious. ".
"This cannot be done at scale or at a reasonable cost. Again, you can't use this to talk about saving the world. It's wishful thinking, he says, and these businesses must be truthful.
Scientists have questioned the industry's environmental credentials, which add to the uncertainty surrounding scaling up production.
Theoretically, reducing the world's reliance on livestock and arable land for the production of meat should reduce carbon emissions, but for the time being, the sophisticated technology required to produce cultivated meat is so energy-intensive that it negates any advantages.
According to one study, the procedure even generates up to 25 times more carbon dioxide than traditional beef.
Josh Tetrick from Eat Just responded, "For sure," when asked by the BBC if the entire endeavor might fail.
Nevertheless, he is unfazed: "Making meat in this manner is both necessary and highly uncertain," he claims.
The situation is not simple. It's challenging. It might not work out and is not guaranteed. However, we also have the option of doing nothing. So we made the decision to place a wager and go for it. ".
Many investors have made the same choice to wager. An estimated $2.08 billion has been spent on developing meat from crops as of this year.
Relying on investments from private businesses might not be sufficient, though, if cultivated meat is to become anything more than a niche substitute for the wealthy in the developed world.
For farmed meat to compete with traditionally slaughtered meat, governments will need to invest "significant public money," according to Mr. Tetrick.
"This is similar to how we switched to renewable energy. It's a project that will take a lifetime, possibly even several lifetimes, he claims.
However, as of right now, neither a nation outside of Singapore nor a serious investment have been made in the sale of meat from farms.
If cultivated meat companies do not soon "look in the mirror" and present conservative forecasts to investors, both private and public funding will cease, according to Ricardo San Martin from UC Berkeley.
Investors and governments will not want to spend money on something that is not scientifically proven in the future unless there is a clear path to success.
