Why Seaweed Is the Next Great American Ingredient

In Portland, Maine, seaweed is everywhere — and not just the bay or the ocean. The Maine oysters at Fore Street are served with a seaweed mignonette, and the ones at Bread & Friends come with shiro dashi pearls and kelp butter. At Norimoto Bakery, the focaccia hybrid is dressed with Maine seaweed puree before it’s baked. An entire store, Heritage Seaweed, is dedicated to seaweed-related goods like algae cooking oil and spicy kelp bitters, and there’s even a festival (Seaweed Week) that celebrates these aquatic vegetables in all their glory.

Not only is seaweed a delicious, umami-packed ingredient, but it’s also nutrient-dense and incredibly sustainable — when farmed, it requires no land or freshwater, with minimal carbon emissions. The ingredient has always been common in Korean and Japanese cooking, but lately, restaurants of all cuisines have it front and center on their menus, even name-dropping specific varieties of the briny algae. At Alna Store, a market and restaurant in Alna, Maine, where the menu changes often, we tried a mind-blowing seaweed cacio e pepe — the pecorino and black pepper sauce seasoned with wakame, dulse, nori, and kombu. It was rich, earthy, and savory, with a subtle aquatic funk: a new frontier of salinity.

And the love for seaweed exists beyond Maine. In New York City, 2023 F&W Best New Chef Ed Szymanski tops a Spanish tortilla with peekytoe crab and seaweed butter at his seafood restaurant, Crevette, and New England–inspired eatery Smithereens serves a layered candied seaweed dessert. Across the country, phytoplankton risotto is topped with red dulse at 7 Adams in San Francisco, and at Burdell in Oakland, California, chef Geoff Davis uses kombu in his vegetable stock.

Seaweed isn’t just riding a wave — it’s crashing menus all over the United States in increasingly creative and delicious ways.

The 5 most common types of edible algae

There are thousands of species of edible algae, but only a few are frequently used on menus. Here are the five you should know, how to identify them, and what makes them unique.

Wakame

This mild-flavored seaweed is dark green and sold both as dried, snackable strips and blanched and salted. Once rehydrated, wakame is most commonly used in salads or to flavor stews and soups.

Nori

Nori is the name for a seaweed (typically red algae) that is pressed, dried, and cut into thin sheets. It’s combined with sesame seeds and salt for furikake seasoning and serves as the sushi wrapper for most maki and hand rolls.

Kombu

Umami-packed and subtly sweet, kombu — the Japanese word for dried kelp — is the key to making Japanese dashi broth (along with bonito flakes). In addition to soups, kombu can add a briny flavor to butter, beans, and roasted meats.

Hijiki

Sold dried then rehydrated before eating, hijiki is small and dark brown in color, with a twiglike appearance. Compared to other seaweeds, it’s less briny — the taste and texture are similar to that of a wood ear mushroom. 

Dulse

Dulse is beloved by chefs for its crimson color and salty, smoky, bacon-like flavor. It can be eaten fresh out of the water or used in its dried form, ground into a seasoning for popcorn, eggs, or pasta.