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IT IS Saturday night and I am cooking for friends. I pour three glasses of red and carefully lay the fillet steaks in the pan. A crust begins to form as the carbohydrates caramelise. A few minutes on each side and they are ready. I bite through the crunchy exterior into a juicy centre that fills my mouth with a delicious hint of umami. I smile at my friends. I have managed to cook the steaks perfectly 鈥� and I have a clear conscience. No cow died for our enjoyment and the greenhouse gas emissions were minimal. Our fillet steaks were entirely made from plants.

Vegan food is having a moment. McDonald鈥檚, Subway and Burger King have all launched vegan products in recent years, Impossible鈥檚 鈥渃hicken鈥� nuggets and 鈥渟ausage鈥� patties are sold in UK pubs, and the plant-based section of my supermarket has become an aisle. But something is missing. The processed food and fast food markets are well catered for, but what about those of us who would prefer to tuck into a filet mignon than a Filet-O-Fish?

I鈥檓 talking about fine dining. For me it is a real treat, a licence to eat beautiful ingredients or experience extraordinary meals that I could never cook myself. Increasingly, though, this indulgent pursuit is starting to feel, well, overindulgent.

Historically, fine dining involves a lot of planet-destroying meat and dairy, and .

The good news is that vegan foods are spreading to the fine-dining world. But what does vegan haute cuisine look like, and can it compete with traditional cordon bleu?

To answer those questions, we first need to consider what makes luxury food so luxurious. Let鈥檚 start with the simplest explanation: the ingredients themselves. To many Western palates, fine dining has long been associated with high-quality meat, fish and dairy.

One way to emulate this is by creating plant-based foods inspired by these traditional luxuries. Visit D茅lice & Sarrasin in New York, for instance, and you can try its crabless crab cakes made from dehydrated lemon peel, yellow pepper and seaweed, or go to Gauthier Soho in London to sample 鈥渇aux gras鈥� made from walnuts, lentils and cognac.

To get even closer to the real deal, food companies are working on recreating luxury foods themselves. My plant-based filet mignon was made by , a US start-up that attempts to recreate the texture and prized fat marbling of high-end cuts of meat with layers of soya and wheat protein fibres, mimicking the musculature of meat. My friends and I felt it was more akin to salt beef than fillet steak.

Plant-based 鈥渕eat鈥� does have the seal of approval from , chef patron of Gauthier Soho, which was awarded a Michelin star in 2011. He uses a product from Redefine Meat in one of his dishes, and is impressed. 鈥淭hey鈥檝e managed to recreate this fattiness that is perfectly integrated within the fibre,鈥� he says.

Other companies are hot on their heels, creating (made of kelp), (created from seawater, algae and rice infused with a fermented culture) and (made using wheat gluten, rice flour, coconut oil and beetroot).

But when it comes to precisely replicating high-end meats, one technique goes above and beyond: cell-cultured meat. This is food made using stem cells taken from an animal and coaxed into becoming the muscle, fat and connective tissue that comprise regular meat. The cells are grown around edible scaffolds to recreate the various cuts of meat we are used to. They may not be vegan, but they get close to being cruelty free.

The first meal made from lab-cultured chicken cells was sold at 1880, a members鈥� club in Singapore in 2020, and there are now several start-ups around the world racing to produce all sorts of foodstuffs in a similar way, including caviar and foie gras.

But while the ingredients themselves are a big draw, they aren鈥檛 the only element that creates a high-end dining experience. 鈥淟uxury has to be something that lots of people desire and, at the same time, most people don鈥檛 have access to,鈥� says at the University of Leicester, UK, who has studied food鈥檚 role in human culture.

Inaccessibility can be a product of rarity 鈥� a tin of from a sturgeon carrying a rare gene for albinism, for example, or a of a subspecies classed as vulnerable because of low stocks. It can also be a result of resource-intensive production methods. Japanese Wagyu beef is widely seen as the pinnacle of such meat thanks to its superior juiciness and tenderness from the marbled fat running through it. This intramuscular fat distribution is related to heat stress and diet, says , global beef ambassador for the US Meat Export Federation, which is why the cows are protected from the heat and fed sumptuous food. Japan鈥檚 Olive Wagyu cows, for example, are fed on inawara rice straw, Italian ryegrass and pressed olive pulp. Just a few are slaughtered each month.

The vegan answer might be to create rarity by controlling what and how much gets made of any single item. For instance, Gauthier says that exclusivity could be maintained by making a line of cultured cells from 鈥渢he best Kobe Wagyu cow鈥�, and then restricting its use to maintain scarcity and exclusivity.

There are also many non-meat foods that are incredibly rare and are highly prized in some cultures, which would lend themselves well to a more sustainable fine-dining establishment. In Japan, for instance, certain kinds of melon would give Wagyu cows a run for their money in terms of labour-intensive production. Crown muskmelons are hand-reared for 100 days with extreme care, and fitted with caps to prevent sunburn.

But exclusivity isn鈥檛 solely about ingredients or how expensive they might be. It is also about who is stirring the pot and the story they tell. Chefs like Heston Blumenthal or Ferran Adri脿 won their restaurants鈥� Michelin stars through their innovative approaches to fine dining. Vegan restaurateurs wanting to emulate this kind of success know their pulling power must arise not only from the ingredients they use, but also the uniqueness of the experience they offer. 鈥淚 feel like I鈥檓 a scientist not a chef,鈥� says head chef Elena Savchuk of , a vegan restaurant in Knightsbridge, London.

The playfulness and storytelling that often combine to create the perfect high-end meal can easily be emulated in vegan restaurants. For instance, one of the tasting menus served at ONA, France鈥檚 first Michelin-starred vegan restaurant, is inspired by Homer鈥檚 Odyssey, thanks to head chef first calling as an archaeologist.

And, of course, any ingredient can be elevated to luxury status in the right hands. Think of a turnip grown in the specific terroir of the chef鈥檚 kitchen garden, harvested at the perfect point in the season, on the day it was served, before being transformed into 10 wildly different morsels that delight the tongue and surprise the eyes. 鈥淭he rarity is the creativeness,鈥� says Gauthier. 鈥淚t鈥檚 in the brain of the chef being inspired by the look of the ingredient, by its smell, by where you stand on the planet at which time of the year. It鈥檚 luxurious because you can鈥檛 duplicate it.鈥�

The new luxury is a meal you can鈥檛 enjoy anywhere else on Earth, says an industry insider familiar with Michelin guidelines, who wished to remain anonymous. 鈥淭oday, it鈥檚 not about an expensive product, luxury food is about what you can only eat in one single place,鈥� they say.

Social context is also vital for any fine-dining experience. As uncomfortable as it might be to admit, luxury foods still flag social status. High-end restaurants come with unwritten rules about which cutlery to use, the order of dishes, the silver service and glassware, and the cachet of getting a table in the first place. 鈥淕oing to those kinds of places and having a reservation a year in advance, that鈥檚 a social signifier of status,鈥� says , a cognitive psychologist at the University of Glasgow, UK, whose .

For those at the vanguard of the veganfine-dining movement, it is essential that this entire experience is maintained. When Gauthier made his restaurant menu at Gauthier Soho entirely vegan after the covid-19 lockdowns, he knew he couldn鈥檛 steer too far from what his customers had previously enjoyed (see 鈥淔rom Michelin-starred meat to luxury vegan fare鈥�, below). A key part of this was preserving the trappings of the traditional experience: the crystal, the sommelier and the ma卯tre d鈥� lovingly describing the ingredients 鈥� and not forgetting the elevated price. 鈥淲e want customers to leave still thinking that they鈥檇 had the most luxurious gastronomic French experience they had hoped for,鈥� says Gauthier.

This focus on maintaining the perception of luxury is smart for recruiting more people to plant-based diets, says Papies. Research has shown that, beyond the taste experience, the occasion and when they think of food.

As for me, I am excited by a whole new world of plant-based luxury meals that I have never experienced before. I have yet to taste Blumenthal鈥檚 鈥淢eat Fruit鈥� (a 鈥渕andarin鈥� made of real foie gras enveloped in orange jelly peel). It is heartening to know that I no longer need to 鈥� it is possible to enjoy this level of culinary creativity without the moral or environmental hangover the next day.