Chefs are using vegan ingredients, some of which have been around for centuries, to advance luxury vegan dining
) Eleven Madison Park added a vegan caviar service to its $335 tasting menu, serving tonburi seeds in a packed cylinder, with lettuce wraps in place of toast points, and vegan creme fraiche. Tonburi, also known as land or mountain caviar, has been used in Japanese cuisine for hundreds of years as a caviar-like garnish — Daniel Humm specifically highlighted the ingredient
Other restaurants have mixed other ingredients into tonburi, or used different ingredients altogether, to evoke caviar. Ian Jones, the head chef at Elizabeth in Chicago, said they’ve had more guests requesting its vegan menu. “With us being a fine dining restaurant I feel like we need to offer some luxury ingredients throughout the dinner,” Jones said, “so tonburi came to mind to replace our caviar course.
While tonburi and seaweed have been known as vegan caviars for a long time, they are decisively not caviar. So what happens when, instead of being presented on the menu as a seed or an innovation in molecular gastronomy, these ingredients are given nicknames that associate them with a meat dish? At its worst, it sets expectations tonburi and other vegan caviars can’t and in some ways should never have had to meet. According to, tonburi on its own at EMP wasn’t enough to evoke traditional caviar.
Calling something like tonburi “caviar” also risks separating the ingredient from its Japanese origins, making it seem like a fun, new thing Western chefs have discovered rather than a staple of some Japanese cuisines. Some chefs, like Centeno, are making a concerted effort to contextualize vegan caviar ingredients, by serving it with other vegan ingredients, or explaining how a vegan caviar is made.