Travel + Leisure – December, 2004

Best New American Restaurants 2004

Reservations at El Bulli, the Catalan mecca of experimental cuisine, are off-limits to mere mortals. So what’s a culinary thrill-seeker to do? Book at Moto (945 W. Fulton Market Ave.; 312/491-0058; tasting menus from $50 per person), whose 28-year-old chef, Homaro Cantu, is collaborating with a group of NASA scientists in his quest to redefine the language of food. In a spare meat packing-district dining room, attended by waiters in black lab coats, Cantu practices his own brand of alchemy: vacuum-cooked everything, edible menus fashioned from potato starch paper, sublime Pacific bass cooked table side on a polymer box that he invented and patented. Cantu is at his best when he riffs on the American vernacular—his barbecued capon, for instance, is a trompe l’oeil featuring two preparations of the smoky bird topped with tiny scoops of weirdly wonderful “Kentucky-fried ice cream” (infused with Cantu’s take on the colonel’s secret herbs and spices, of course). It’s hard to know what to make of the strange corkscrew cutlery handles stuffed with shaggy aromatic herbs, another madcap Cantu creation, or the glass of sweet sesame-milk soda that comes with an otherwise flawless sashimi. Still. At a time when most chefs shave truffles into mac and cheese and call it “creative,” let’s applaud one who actually dares.