I was also underwhelmed by the Impossible Foods burger, which was a better imitation of meat than other patties, but not necessarily tastier.
The bigger surprise to me was that Impossible Foods does not apparently control how restaurants prepare their burgers—in fact, the restaurant where I ate it even had an Impossible Foods chili. I would have expected IF to put pretty close restrictions around how you cook and present their foods, to make sure that people don't have a bad experience and assume it's the fault of the "meat".
Chili, interesting. I tried breaking up a Beyond Burger patty so I could use it as ground beef filling for burritos/pasta. It was pretty much a disaster. Even when cooking the burger normally there is very little room for error, compared to real beef.
I think the end-game for these companies should be to produce a chuck substitute that is malleable rather than being restricted to patties. And of course it shouldn't ruin easily.
Have you tried Quorn mince for comparison? It's probably not great in a burrito but I find it fine in a rich pasta like Bolognese. I'm also a fan of their southern style chicken patties, I prefer them to any "real" chicken patties.
Impossible and Beyond really aren't comparable. I prefer Beyond, because the Impossible tastes and feels just a bit too much like meat for my tastes. The Impossible burger also crumbles way better. I haven't tried to crumble the Beyond burger, but I have a strong feeling it wouldn't end nicely.
> because the Impossible tastes and feels just a bit too much like meat for my tastes
Many, this industry has quite a dilemma. On the one hand, some folks want their products to taste as much like meat as possible. But others will avoid products that taste too much like meat.
When Beyond Meat said they'd sell their products in the meat section of the grocery store, I thought it was brilliant. Their goal is to convert meat eaters after all.
Not everyone got on board with this though. Safeway sells the patties literally next to cow meat, whereas Whole Foods puts them in the vegan section next to seitan.
The bigger surprise to me was that Impossible Foods does not apparently control how restaurants prepare their burgers—in fact, the restaurant where I ate it even had an Impossible Foods chili. I would have expected IF to put pretty close restrictions around how you cook and present their foods, to make sure that people don't have a bad experience and assume it's the fault of the "meat".