Jeremy Umansky's "Lake Caviar"

Caviar for the People

8 Minute read

13 Jul 2026

Ximena N. Beltran Quan Kiu

Journalist

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Cleveland chef Jeremy Umansky is turning Great Lakes fish roe into a $5 alternative to sturgeon caviar, challenging what gives the luxury food its value.

Caviar is everywhere right now. Caviar bumps at parties have become a favorite on TikTok, chefs are using it to create high-priced menu items, and brands far outside luxury food, including McDonald’s and online retailer Quince, are getting in on the trend. Traditionally made from salt-cured sturgeon roe, the delicacy remains one of the world’s most recognizable luxury foods.

At Pier Top, the revolving lounge at Pier Sixty-Six in Fort Lauderdale, the off-menu “Pie’s the Limit” costs $1,000 and layers nearly 125 grams of caviar over smoked salmon, whipped crème fraîche, and chives in a golden tart shell. At Miss River in New Orleans, crème fraîche ice cream comes topped with Imperial Golden Osetra caviar. In Los Angeles, the caviar upgrade at Pawn Shop turns a $16 Wagyu hot dog into a $64 to $74 menu item. The finished dog carries 15 grams of caviar alongside Japanese-style mayonnaise and chives.

But in Cleveland, one chef wants to recreate the caviar experience with roe from other Great Lakes fish.

“The Great Lakes region was the world's number one caviar exporter for a few decades,” says James Beard Award-nominated chef Jeremy Umansky. “It was such a plentiful food that people would go into a bar after work to get a shift drink. There weren’t peanuts or snacks on the bar; there were literally bowls of caviar. It was this ubiquitous bar food that every working-class person had access to because it was a loss leader for the bars. They knew people were going to have a beer after that.”

For Umansky, the distance between caviar’s past abundance and present-day luxury presents an opportunity to rethink what the caviar experience can be. Over the past several years, the co-owner of Cleveland’s Larder Delicatessen & Bakery has been developing what he calls “Lake Caviar.” His goal is to source roe from Great Lakes fish and offer it at the deli as a $5 to $7 addition to a meal. “This is a culturally iconic and beloved food,” says Umansky. “My hope is that it doesn't become more exclusive; it should be more accessible.”

Understanding Umansky’s alternative begins with why traditional sturgeon caviar became so expensive. During the late 19th century, Lake Erie held hundreds of thousands of lake sturgeon, whose roe supported a lucrative caviar trade. Overfishing, pollution, dams, and habitat degradation drove a steep decline, and the fish eventually became nearly impossible to find in the lake. As wild sturgeon populations collapsed and international trade became more tightly regulated, aquaculture replaced wild fisheries as the primary source of caviar.

Sturgeon’s long maturation period also contributes to making its caviar so expensive. Farm-raised female white sturgeon, for example, take seven to eight years to mature, during which producers must continually feed and maintain them before harvesting any roe. Lake sturgeon mature even later, reproducing at 10 to 30 years old, with females typically reaching sexual maturity in their 20s and spawning only intermittently. Because lake sturgeon mature slowly and females do not spawn every year, conservation efforts can take decades to produce a self-sustaining population.

For “Lake Caviar,” however, Umansky is looking beyond sturgeon to roe from other Great Lakes fish. “Our signature item is whitefish [caviar],” says Umansky. “It’s related to trout and salmon. It has this beautiful golden egg. Almost think like they’re a chicken or a duck egg. The yolk has this bright brininess. It’s like an ocean spray of salt.”

Umansky says he also sources roe from walleye, carp, and steelhead during a brief spring harvest that yields between 20 and 60 kilograms, his supply for the year.

Using roe from other fish also raises questions about what may be sold as caviar and how consumers can know what they are buying. Unlike names such as Champagne and Parmigiano Reggiano, which are protected in many markets by rules governing geographic origin and production, caviar is not tied to a specific place. But the term is not entirely unrestricted. In the United States, FDA guidance says “caviar” on its own should refer only to salt-cured sturgeon roe. Products made from the roe of other fish should identify the species, as in “whitefish caviar” or “trout caviar.”

Umansky argues that the meaning of caviar became muddled as sturgeon populations collapsed and producers misrepresented the origins of their roe. “At one time, it was that way. The industry used to use a royal symbol and caviar label for caviar,” says Umansky. “Where there is fresh water, there are different sturgeon species. We came to the point, historically, where not all of them, but the majority, were used for caviar production. But we lost them all. The Russians overfished and screwed up their population and then came for ours and still labeled it caviar from St. Petersburg, even though they were our eggs. There was so much adulteration that the ability to keep those standards was lost.”

That history also informs Umansky’s concerns about how caviar is processed and labeled today. “Adulteration in markets outside of North America is a very real thing, and it isn't always a nefarious thing,” says Umansky. “Sometimes it's as simple as someone trying to extend their caviar shelf life so they don't lose money. The number one culprit has been borax. People use it to wash the caviar and get rid of fishy odors, and also to plump the eggs. You also see dyeing of eggs to market it as a different species of sturgeon so they can command a higher price.”

Borax is authorized in the European Union as a caviar preservative, though it is not permitted in food in the United States. Its presence alone is therefore not evidence of adulteration. Species mislabeling, however, is well documented: one 2023 study found that one-third of the commercial caviar samples it tested were labeled as the wrong sturgeon species.

To reduce those risks, Umansky recommends buying directly from farms or choosing caviar from countries with strong labeling, traceability, and animal welfare standards.

For Umansky, making caviar more accessible also means challenging how consumers assign value to food. “The most mundane and common ingredients can have the most incredible and delicious experiences attached to them,” says Umansky. “Caviar, because of its perceived exclusivity, is a prime food for disruption and destruction of this perception of what gives value to food.”

Because Umansky’s Lake Caviar comes from whitefish and other regional fish rather than lake sturgeon, it does not recreate the caviar that once made the Great Lakes a major exporter. Instead, it offers diners a $5 to $7 regional alternative to traditional sturgeon caviar. His project may make that experience more accessible, but it also asks diners to decide how much of caviar’s value resides in the sturgeon egg and how much resides in the name.