It Took 5 Years To Develop 'Impossible Burger' And Now It's Here In LA

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — A new kind of burger made its West Coast debut this week.

It's called "The Impossible Burger," and includes a plant-based patty that had been engineered at a laboratory in Silicon Valley.

"I actually didn't know that it wasn't meat when I had it," said one restaurant-goer, who tried the burger Thursday. "It was completely fooling me."

It took five years to develop the burger, which features a secret ingredient: heme.

Heme is a molecule, which "contributes to the characteristic color and taste of meat," explains Impossible Foods, the startup that developed the burger.

"It's a plant hemoglobin that was developed by Pat Brown that really kind of mimics a lot of the things that you'd find in myoglobin, in meat," said Traci Des Jardins, a restaurant owner.

The burger is available at Crossroads Kitchen in Los Angeles, as well as Cockscomb and Jardiniere in San Francisco.

For more information, click here.