A Potato That Tastes Like Roast Chicken: Row 7’s Poulette Reaches Whole Foods Shelves

Row 7 Seed Company’s Poulette — a variety born from a 2013 conversation between chef Michel Bras and Cornell breeder Walter De Jong — is now on sale at Whole Foods stores in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, testing whether flavour-led breeding can create durable value in the potato category.

Some varieties are bred for yield, some for storage, some for the fryer. Poulette was bred for a memory. According to Row 7 Seed Company, the project began in 2013 at a seed conference hosted by Dan Barber, where French chef Michel Bras spoke of Institut de Beauvais — a French potato he valued for its flavour and texture, and which his mother had grown. Potato breeder Walter De Jong subsequently located the variety and crossed it with a New York potato. More than a decade of selection and testing later, the result reached retail: Poulette potatoes went on sale through Whole Foods Market stores in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, with Food & Wine reporting the introduction began on 22 September.

The selling point is arresting: a potato whose flavour is described as reminiscent of roast chicken — savoury and nutty, with a creamy but delicately floury texture suited to baking, frying and mashing. Potato News Today, which covered the launch in detail, is careful to note these are the supplier’s sensory descriptions rather than findings from an independently published comparative tasting. That distinction matters to trade readers: an evocative description can drive a first purchase, but only repeat buying will validate it.

The breeding credentials behind the marketing are substantial. De Jong is a professor in Cornell’s School of Integrative Plant Science, in the Plant Breeding and Genetics Section, where the program develops chipping and fresh-market varieties for the northeastern United States with stated priorities of agronomic acceptability and pest and disease resistance. Cornell’s breeding tradition spans more than 50 varieties. Grower participation is equally embedded: an August 2025 Cornell account describes Mahany Farms testing potential varieties with Cornell for at least 55 years, alongside longstanding collaboration with CSS Farms and a variety development committee of growers and processors. These are program credentials rather than Poulette-specific trial results — the public launch material does not yet establish a complete, quantified Poulette specification across maturity, saleable yield, grading, storage behaviour and disease susceptibility.

Poulette was evaluated over several years through Row 7’s Trial Network, a community of more than 150 chefs and farmers who assess varieties while still under development — a participatory model that treats the kitchen as part of the breeding environment, not merely the final destination.

The retail potatoes are marketed as organic, with seed produced organically in New York. Poulette also joins an existing named-potato offer at Row 7: Upstate Abundance, another De Jong selection positioned around small size and creamy texture. Together they sketch the company’s wager — that identifiable potatoes with clear culinary identities can earn premium space in a category built on anonymity.

The unanswered questions are commercial. No repeat-purchase data, no velocity figures and no evidence of a measured sensory advantage over established varieties are yet public. And the availability of harvested potatoes at retail says nothing about the availability of seed to commercial growers — two separate gates on the pathway to scale. What the launch does establish is a working example of flavour-led breeding reaching the shelf. Whether Poulette becomes a durable niche or a curiosity will be decided by the least glamorous metric in the business: the second purchase.