California Aquarium Now Serves Vegan Shrimp

San Francisco-based startup New Wave Foods’ plant-based shrimp will now be featured permanently on the Monterey Bay Aquarium Café’s Sustainable Catch menu. The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch, a program designed to help consumers and businesses choose seafood that supports a healthy ocean, recently admitted New Wave Foods as its first and only plant-based partner. Beginning in 2016, The Monterey Bay Aquarium Sustainable Foods Institute invited New Wave Foods to join a vegan panel to speak about the future of plant-based and planet-friendly alternatives. Through this connection, the partnership began after the café’s executive chef Matthew Beaudin sampled the soy-based shrimp alternative. “Our shrimp is made from algae-and-plant ingredients, making us the new wave in sustainable seafood,” New Wave Foods co-founder Dominique Barnes told VegNews. The aquarium’s café now serves the Sweet Chili “Shrimp” Burrito made with New Wave’s Crispy Shrimp, guacamole, rice, cilantro, and coleslaw wrapped in a flour tortilla. “I’m confident that as people continue to order and enjoy the burrito,” Barnes said, “we will see our plant-based shrimp expand to new menu items.” Last month, meal delivery service Veestro added a new Shr’mp Jambalaya dish featuring New Wave’s shrimp to its menu.