Homaro Cantu's odd brand of humor, technology, shock value, and flavor has turned the fine-dining experience on its head. Now this 29-year-old reformed pyromaniac is trying to redefine the nature of food--and, oh yeah, end world hunger.
By Jennifer Reingold (Page 1 of 3)
By Jennifer Reingold (Page 1 of 3)
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It may be freezing outside on this wintry March morning, but deep in the bowels of one of the most elegant--and possibly strangest--restaurants in Chicago, it's getting hot fast. It's the weekly chef's brainstorming meeting at Homaro Cantu Jr.'s Moto restaurant, and Cantu and his passel of wacky young chefs are coming up with fresh ways to tweak the restaurant's wildly innovative menu at a rate that would make a corporate creativity consultant lose his lunch--or, perhaps, clamor to eat another one.
Even before the session begins, there are a few clues that this is not your average fine-dining establishment. Start with the Class IV laser, normally used for surgery, on prominent display in the dining room. At Moto, it's an important cooking tool. Then there's the huge tank of industrial-use liquid nitrogen in the backyard, used to freeze things that are normally hot and to mold foods into wholly unnatural shapes. Finally, there's the huge photo of Salvador Dalí, mounted prominently above the stairs leading into the basement kitchen. Printed on the photo is a quote: "The only difference between a madman and me is that I am not mad."
That is not immediately obvious as the meeting gets started. Ben Roche, Moto's 23-year-old pastry chef and resident science geek, describes a current project: "I'm trying to make a scoop of ice cream that you cook at a low temperature so it shatters into a powder when you eat it."
Cantu, a tall 29-year-old whose black hair, pale skin, and devilish smile gives him a faint resemblance to Eddie Munster, nods encouragingly. "What else?"
Darryl Nemeth, a Moto line cook, pipes up, "One idea I had was making ketchup fryable, in a form that was cuttable, with waffle-fry sauce."
Even before the session begins, there are a few clues that this is not your average fine-dining establishment. Start with the Class IV laser, normally used for surgery, on prominent display in the dining room. At Moto, it's an important cooking tool. Then there's the huge tank of industrial-use liquid nitrogen in the backyard, used to freeze things that are normally hot and to mold foods into wholly unnatural shapes. Finally, there's the huge photo of Salvador Dalí, mounted prominently above the stairs leading into the basement kitchen. Printed on the photo is a quote: "The only difference between a madman and me is that I am not mad."
That is not immediately obvious as the meeting gets started. Ben Roche, Moto's 23-year-old pastry chef and resident science geek, describes a current project: "I'm trying to make a scoop of ice cream that you cook at a low temperature so it shatters into a powder when you eat it."
Cantu, a tall 29-year-old whose black hair, pale skin, and devilish smile gives him a faint resemblance to Eddie Munster, nods encouragingly. "What else?"
Darryl Nemeth, a Moto line cook, pipes up, "One idea I had was making ketchup fryable, in a form that was cuttable, with waffle-fry sauce."
"Like a cross-cut dealy? You get ketchup and fries all in one? That's cool," says Cantu, his face lighting up. "That's a great idea. I think you could do it with tapioca. The only issue is whether the tomato sugar would burn."
The meeting turns to what the chefs ate on their days off, a regular source of new ideas. One chef fesses up to eating Hot Pockets, those soggy, microwavable excuses for stromboli that are more suggestive of a date with bad reality television than a gourmet restaurant whose 18-course grand tasting menu goes for $160 a head (wine not included).
But not for Cantu. He is so excited, he can barely sit still. Finally, a flavor and a concept for the "lava lamp" drink he has been yearning for, with solid pieces that slowly turn into liquid. Says Cantu: "Okay, so it comes in a glass and there are little pockets inside that are actually hot, and the whole thing is hot, then gets cold as you drink it. That's a no-brainer."
"Are you sure that wouldn't creep people out?" the Hot Pocket eater ventures.
"Any idea's a great idea as long as it tastes great," Cantu says.
There are people who play it safe and people who just can't. Cantu is the latter, a rosemary-wielding rebel who loves to challenge a diner's assumptions about how food should look, taste, and feel. "He's an inventor who accidentally ended up as a chef and is returning to being an inventor," says Wylie Dufresne, chef-owner of WD-50, a New York restaurant known for a similarly technomodern approach. "But his food is good and tasty."
The meeting turns to what the chefs ate on their days off, a regular source of new ideas. One chef fesses up to eating Hot Pockets, those soggy, microwavable excuses for stromboli that are more suggestive of a date with bad reality television than a gourmet restaurant whose 18-course grand tasting menu goes for $160 a head (wine not included).
But not for Cantu. He is so excited, he can barely sit still. Finally, a flavor and a concept for the "lava lamp" drink he has been yearning for, with solid pieces that slowly turn into liquid. Says Cantu: "Okay, so it comes in a glass and there are little pockets inside that are actually hot, and the whole thing is hot, then gets cold as you drink it. That's a no-brainer."
"Are you sure that wouldn't creep people out?" the Hot Pocket eater ventures.
"Any idea's a great idea as long as it tastes great," Cantu says.
There are people who play it safe and people who just can't. Cantu is the latter, a rosemary-wielding rebel who loves to challenge a diner's assumptions about how food should look, taste, and feel. "He's an inventor who accidentally ended up as a chef and is returning to being an inventor," says Wylie Dufresne, chef-owner of WD-50, a New York restaurant known for a similarly technomodern approach. "But his food is good and tasty."
It is this quirky lust for the unexpected--the desire to push the culinary envelope by combining flavors, textures, and temperatures in previously unimagined ways--and his general irreverence for the accepted parameters of food and fine dining that have suddenly propelled Cantu into the role of the restaurant world's enfant terrible. In just two years, this young chef has drawn attention from The New York Times and Gourmet, had the Who's Who of modern gastronomy in to sniff (and taste) around, and scored an invite to cook a dinner for Nobel Prize winners. He has made many more-traditional chefs nervous--and been called everything from a faddish flavor of the month to a creative genius.
But while Cantu is most certainly a chef, he is also someone whose approach to innovation has relevance far beyond the kitchen. He is the classic mad scientist, a Stephen Hawking acolyte with a basement filled with gadgets, robots, and gazillions of inventions aching for just a little bit more time and attention. Unburdened by pesky details such as practicality or resources, he's the type of guy who reaches for the nightstand at 4 a.m. with yet another nutty thought (his wife, Katie, bought him a tape recorder to mutter into). And despite the accolades, in his mind he is just getting started. "This isn't just gimmicky s--t," he says. "There is a point to this."
The point, for Cantu, is simple yet starkly, almost insanely, ambitious: He wants to use his strange brew of self-taught rocket science and professional culinary training to change the way the world thinks about food--which has barely evolved, he says, while everything else has advanced at warp speed. "What is cooking? 'Cooking' is a loose term. It's understanding energy or the lack thereof," he says. "People are afraid because their mentality as a whole has been held back with food and pushed forward with everything else around them." Cantu hopes to commercialize some of his inventions, with the ultimate aim of improving the lot of man. "My main goal here is not to wind up on aisle seven at Safeway. I don't want to be the guy doing the bottled hot sauce. We're changing the way humans perceive food."
And although some people think Cantu is talking a big game to get more people to his restaurant, there is a clear method to his madness. While Cantu refers to Moto, a slick minimalist spot in Chicago's meatpacking district, as his "test kitchen," he is also expanding beyond it--not with a chain of Motos in Vegas and beyond, the traditional route for a name-brand chef, but rather with a new business, Cantu Designs. He hopes to license such patent-pending inventions as his "food replicator," a tricked-out printer named in homage to Star Trek that creates "edible surfaces" such as paper flavored like cheesecake or a mojito; new utensils, which he hopes will change the way people eat; and his polymer cooking box, which allows food to continue cooking even after it is removed from a heat source.
If it's not so easy to find the link between edible paper and world salvation, a few hours with Cantu will at least get you thinking differently about the possibilities. He's a strange and paradoxical combination of idealist and cynic, a guy who in one breath talks about working with the U.S. government to help revolutionize the MRE (meals ready to eat) system and in the other proclaims he'll never be able to work for "the man." But working with contradictions is exactly what Cantu's all about. Others' obstacles are his possibilities.
Next: Becoming Chef Cantu
Back to: Reinventing Food gallery
But while Cantu is most certainly a chef, he is also someone whose approach to innovation has relevance far beyond the kitchen. He is the classic mad scientist, a Stephen Hawking acolyte with a basement filled with gadgets, robots, and gazillions of inventions aching for just a little bit more time and attention. Unburdened by pesky details such as practicality or resources, he's the type of guy who reaches for the nightstand at 4 a.m. with yet another nutty thought (his wife, Katie, bought him a tape recorder to mutter into). And despite the accolades, in his mind he is just getting started. "This isn't just gimmicky s--t," he says. "There is a point to this."
The point, for Cantu, is simple yet starkly, almost insanely, ambitious: He wants to use his strange brew of self-taught rocket science and professional culinary training to change the way the world thinks about food--which has barely evolved, he says, while everything else has advanced at warp speed. "What is cooking? 'Cooking' is a loose term. It's understanding energy or the lack thereof," he says. "People are afraid because their mentality as a whole has been held back with food and pushed forward with everything else around them." Cantu hopes to commercialize some of his inventions, with the ultimate aim of improving the lot of man. "My main goal here is not to wind up on aisle seven at Safeway. I don't want to be the guy doing the bottled hot sauce. We're changing the way humans perceive food."
And although some people think Cantu is talking a big game to get more people to his restaurant, there is a clear method to his madness. While Cantu refers to Moto, a slick minimalist spot in Chicago's meatpacking district, as his "test kitchen," he is also expanding beyond it--not with a chain of Motos in Vegas and beyond, the traditional route for a name-brand chef, but rather with a new business, Cantu Designs. He hopes to license such patent-pending inventions as his "food replicator," a tricked-out printer named in homage to Star Trek that creates "edible surfaces" such as paper flavored like cheesecake or a mojito; new utensils, which he hopes will change the way people eat; and his polymer cooking box, which allows food to continue cooking even after it is removed from a heat source.
If it's not so easy to find the link between edible paper and world salvation, a few hours with Cantu will at least get you thinking differently about the possibilities. He's a strange and paradoxical combination of idealist and cynic, a guy who in one breath talks about working with the U.S. government to help revolutionize the MRE (meals ready to eat) system and in the other proclaims he'll never be able to work for "the man." But working with contradictions is exactly what Cantu's all about. Others' obstacles are his possibilities.
Next: Becoming Chef Cantu
Back to: Reinventing Food gallery
