By David Ponce
[A little old, but what the heck.]
It was really only a matter of time until an enterprising chef took modern technological tools and started integrating them in his cooking but 29-year-old executive chef Homaro Cantu, working at Moto restaurant in Chicago, is taking things to a whole other dimension.
Perhaps Cantu’s greatest innovation at Moto is a modified Canon i560 inkjet printer (which he calls the “food replicator” in homage to Star Trek) that prints flavoured images onto edible paper. The print cartridges are filled with food-based “inks”, including juiced carrots, tomatoes and purple potatoes, and the paper tray contains sheets of soybean and potato starch. The printouts are flavoured by dipping them in a powder of dehydrated soy sauce, squash, sugar, vegetables or sour cream, and then they are frozen, baked or fried.
The most common printed dish at Moto is the menu. It can literally whet your appetite by providing a taste test of what’s on the menu: tear off and eat a picture of a cow and it will taste like filet mignon. Once you are done with your sampling, the menu can be torn up and thrown into a bowl of soup – but only once you’ve ordered your two-dimensional sushi which consists of photos of maki rolls sprinkled on the back with soy and seaweed flavouring.
Other “innovations” include the use of a Class IV laser, superconductors and handheld ion particle guns. It’s fascinating stuff, really, and you should read the whole article. Unfortunately, very little is said about how this stuff tastes, though to justify the $65 to $160 prices, it better give me a mouth orgasm.
[FirstScience Article]
[Moto Restaurant]
VIA [J-Walkblog]
Restaurante de comida impresa…
La tecnología y la cocina moderna comienzan a converger, a todos los niveles.
No es nuevo que artilugios electrónicos ayuden a los cocineros en el proceso de investigación y elaboración de nuevas recetas, pero Homaru Cantu, ch…
Thats amazing and weird, but it is very innovative :D. Great post!
Homaro Cantu?s food-based ink in an innovation which I believe may have a diverse array of extraordinary applications. As David Ponce mentioned in this blog, Mr. Cantu prints his menus on edible paper. He uses colorful fruit and vegetable juices to create flavored inks, creating tastes which are appropriate to the meal he is advertising. Effectively, the chef is letting his customers sample a dish before it is served. As a very indecisive person when it is my turn to order at a restaurant, I can appreciate how helpful this feature may be! Looking into the future, this technology might prove to be an effective and low calorie alternative to enjoying food. Willy Wonka once proposed lick-able wallpaper. With Mr. Cantu?s flavored ink, this dream is now a reality. Men and women hungry for sweets need not eat a candy bar. Rather, they could let a piece of sweet, flavored paper dissolve upon their tongues; they would enjoy flavors without compromising diet plans. Hopefully Mr. Cantu will fully explore the possibilities of his calligraphy and not let his imagination end with images of flavorful kappa maki!