The way I was thinking about it is that how meat tastes depends very much on the excretion system of the animal removing waste products from the tissues. And those functions (the lymphatic system, the circulation, the kidneys, the bowels, the lungs) are not present in the lab grown meat tissue. We are obviously providing those functions artificially but I wouldn't be surprised if these artificial attempts are "worse" than the real deal at their job. After all the real chickens spent millions of years co-evolving these support functions with their tissues.

Plus what the tissue is fed! Some say they can taste if the cow was fed corn vs grass. Whatever the lab grown meat is fed must be even bigger difference from the original.

> There are several additional steps needed in order to make it palatable.

Makes sense. I wasn't even thinking about those, just the growing conditions. But of corse! And I bet while these were developed there was a ton of "prepare, taste, spit it out in disgust, adjust" cycles. With extant animals in theory at least you can do it scientifically by having blind taste tests comparing the real meat with the lab grown one. With mammoth, or anything else extinct, we would be guessing and making things up even more.