Gourmet Magazine – COVER STORY October 2006

Chefs Like Us

by Robert Sietsema
….Cantu himself grew up in poverty in Oregon, where he “ate a lot of hot dogs and government surplus food.” Asked if he was interested in science as a kid, he replied, “only if it involved an explosion.”

Moto is as much think tank as restaurant. Pictures of food printed with vegetable inks on modified food starch (an idea that evolved from a digestible picture of a maki roll wrapped around an actual maki roll) may serve as an edible menu or as a course (for example an amuse of creamy risotto). He also uses the food starch sheets to produce nonillustrated foods, or as ingredients to be sprinkled over other dishes. And the chef’s newly formed Cantu Designs has set his sights on feeding the Third World with paper images of food that contain the same flavor and nutritional value as the originals…..

….Finally, Cantu offeres a super – sweet cotton candy liquid truffle as well as an ingenious recipe that we loved; He grabbed a box of doughnuts off the supermarket shelf and transformed them into sumptuous pancakes, which he serves with a sauce that combines coffee and fresh strawberries. Weird, perhaps, but delicious. And, best of all, as with the other intriguing oddities that follow, you can – and should – try this at home.