Since 2004, the restaurant Moto has been creating “high-tech” dishes which incorporate elements such as carbonated fruit, edible paper, lasers and liquid nitrogen. The restaurant is located in the Fulton River District in Chicago, and is the work of Chefs Homaro Cantu and Ben Roche. Their kitchens have high-tech equipment such as Class IV lasers and liquid nitrogen, and is a laboratory for what Cantu calls, “food engineering.”
This type of cooking, called “molecular gastronomy” of making science-based food is credited to chef Ferran Adria of El Bulli in Spain. At Moto, Cantu and Roche have been redesigning the food and dining experience , serving 15- course meals with some food being reconfigured into new forms and shapes. Some of their dishes include a Cuban pork sandwich that looks like a Cuban cigar, a blended liquefied frozen carrot cake, and Chili-Cheese Nachos, a dish that looks like nachos but is actually a sweet dessert with crumbled chocolate that looks like “chili” and flash-frozen strips of mango playing the part of grated cheese.
Currently, Cantu and Roche are asking how can the food innovations pioneered at their restaurants be used for good? Is it possible to save fuel by taking the delivery driver out of the equation? Download pizza off the internet? Reduce landfill mass by making edible packing peanuts?
In their restaurants, they have experimented with edible packaging, making edible printed “paper” with an image of food on it, or edible menus, which tastes just like the food that is pictured..
They make challenges to their team in the kitchen – such as “How can we make a hamburger patty, but without the cow?” The outcome of this investigation was a juicy hamburger patty from the major components of a cow’s diet: Barley, corn, and beets, which they say is the first veggie-burger to bleed as it cooks, like meat.
Cantu and Roche see the flavor-changing miracle berries having great potential in helping the world’s food crisis. Miracle berries, when eaten, will mask certain taste receptors on the tongue that make things taste sour. This makes eating a lemon, instead of being to sour, taste like lemonade. Making “sushi” out of local watermelon, or paper that tastes like a Greek salad could have a future in helping reduce food transportation and increase food access.
Another assignment they explored in their kitchen was to see if they could cook with local plants and weeds in the Chicago area. For this, the chefs looked for plants in the sidewalks and backyards. With lots of research, they found many that were healthy and could be cooked. Out of this challenge, they made a BBQ sauce made of “free” and local hay and crabapples.
Using local plants the team sees as a solution to food access issues, and having potential of helping turn food miles into food feet, and leading to future grain sources to replace flour.
To hear more about their ideas and food, you can watch the 10 minute talk called Cooking as Alchemy given by Homaro Cantu and Ben Roche from the March 2011TED Conference.
Image Source:
www.moto.com
Links:
Homaro Cantu + Ben Roche: Cooking as alchemy – TED Talk