In a small restaurant in a nondescript building in the central Israeli town of Ness Ziona, diners munched on burgers and minced-meat rice rolls made with “cultured chicken” – meat grown in the adjacent SuperMeat production site.

“It was delicious, the flavour was great,” said Gilly Kanfi, a self-described “meat eater” from Tel Aviv, who had signed up for the meal months in advance.

“If I didn’t know, I would have thought it was a regular chicken burger.”

The Chicken, as the eatery is called, is a testing ground of sorts for SuperMeat, hosting periodical test meals to generate customer feedback while waiting for regulatory approval.

The restaurant’s dark and elegant interior is framed by large windows looking onto a brightly lit laboratory, where technicians monitor large stainless-steel fermentation vats.

“This is the first time people can actually have a taste of a cultivated meat product, while observing the production and the manufacturing process in front of their eyes,” said Ido Savir, SuperMeat’s chief executive.

The chicken or the egg?

The process involves cultivating cells taken from a fertilised chicken egg. Cell cultures are fed a plant-based liquid including proteins, fats, sugars, minerals and vitamins.

With all the feed going directly into production, it grows rapidly, with the mass doubling within a matter of hours.

Savir, a vegan with a background in computer science, sees himself as being at the “forefront of a food revolution” trying to help supply food while limiting the impact on the planet.

Developers said they are working to provide more ethical and sustainable ways to create cruelty- and slaughter-free meat, with the product grown without using genetic engineering or antibiotics.

The company is currently able to produce “hundreds of kilogrammes” each week, Savir added.

He hopes to earn regulatory approval from the United States Food and Drug Administration, and would then increase production to a “commercial” scale.

“This way we’ll be able to reduce the amount of land, water use and so many other resources, and keep the product very healthy and clean,” he said, noting the high prevalence of diseases among chickens produced in factory-style production.

SuperMeat is not the first to develop the technology. In December, a Singapore restaurant made history when it became the first to sell lab-grown chicken meat.