The New Orleans restaurant scene was an early adapter. Dickie Brennan’s Steakhouse has had bowfin caviar on its menu since the early 1990s. At Stella, domestic paddlefish and bowfin caviar garnish plump Gulf of Mexico oysters; at Galatoire’s, Mr. Sichel often uses “Cajun caviar” as “lagniappe” — a local term that means “a little something extra” — atop mashed potatoes. He said he likes the small pearls and texture of the roe, which cooking firms to the consistency of a boiled egg.

Dmitry Tkachenko, a native of Odessa, Ukraine, who now works as a machinery exporter in Newton, Mass., served bowfin caviar at a dinner party not too long ago. “I had it on the table with osetra caviar, and people ate it and didn’t know the difference,” he said.

Many young diners may not ever taste the Caspian beluga of James Bond fame, the osetra or sevruga, which round out the trio of top-tier caviars of the world. As Scott Boswell, the chef and owner of Restaurant Stella, explained, “We’ve had to develop a new taste for fresh eggs because this is all being freshly harvested and lightly salted, but honestly, it’s much better, I think.”

Some caviar enthusiasts will never agree.

“I haven’t sampled bowfin myself, and quite frankly wouldn’t want to,” said Ryan Sutton, the food critic at Bloomberg News, who has lived and studied in Russia. Mr. Sutton was also critical of American paddlefish caviar, which he described as lacking both texture and flavor.

In caviar, a taster wants firmness and pop, “with a clean flavor of the sea,” Mr. Sutton said.

“I like to restrict my eating to the sturgeon,” he added, praising some domestic farmed varieties. “Listen, if the world needs cheap caviar, let them have our hackleback and paddlefish.”

Even the fact that the Food and Drug Administration allows the roe from fish other than the sturgeon to be called caviar — as long as it is qualified by the fish’s name, as in “bowfin caviar” — rubs some people the wrong way.