A potato that tastes like roast chicken sounds like either a small miracle or a marketing team that got bored on a Tuesday. The truth lands somewhere more interesting. Poulette — a new certified-organic variety from Row 7 Seed Company — carries flavor that Row 7 and Dan Barber’s cooks describe as savory, nutty, and deeply roasted, with the richness you’d associate with a proper roast chicken. The potato launched at roughly 60 Whole Foods locations across New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut on September 22, priced at around $6 a bag, according to Food & Wine.
More Than a Decade in the Making
This potato began as a single conversation between a French chef and a Cornell plant breeder — and took more than a decade to reach the grocery shelf.
At a 2013 seed conference organized by Dan Barber, French chef Michel Bras introduced Cornell potato breeder Walter De Jong to the Institut de Beauvais — a rare French heirloom Bras associated with his mother’s cooking. De Jong crossed it with a New York breeding line in 2014. What followed was more than a decade of field trials and kitchen tests, run through a network of more than 150 chefs and farmers. The name isn’t accidental: “poulette” is French for a young hen.
What you need to know:
- Available September through March at select Whole Foods in NY, NJ, and CT; approximately $6 per bag, according to Food & Wine
- Certified organic; texture is creamy but delicately floury
- Works for baking, roasting, frying, mashing, and pommes aligot
- The roast-chicken comparison is a tasting analogy from Row 7 and Barber’s cooks — not a nutritional claim
- Best first test: roast simply with oil and salt, and let the potato speak for itself
“The flavor has the savory richness expected from roast chicken.” — Row 7 Seed Company product page
Whether that registers as chicken skin, dark meat, or simply deep umami will depend on preparation and individual taste. The available coverage does not identify an independent comparative tasting study. This lives in sommelier territory — the place where “wet slate” describes a Chablis and everyone nods. Evocative. Possibly true. Subjective by nature.
Think of a deeply caramelized cauliflower steak that makes a carnivore pause mid-bite. Same energy.
The more significant story isn’t the flavor comparison itself. Poulette was bred with taste as a primary goal alongside agricultural performance — a philosophy that treats the dinner plate as equal partner to the farm field.
How to Cook It
A simple roast is the most honest way to evaluate whether a decade of breeding delivers on its promise.
Roast or bake it first — that’s Barber’s reported starting point. Add oil and salt, use high heat, and resist the urge to complicate things. If the flavor holds up with nothing to hide behind, the potato earns every year it spent in development. For a more involved preparation, twice baked potatoes offer another excellent way to showcase what this variety can do.
