Wallpaper – July – August 2005

How do you like your steak zapped?

by Karen Chung

The worlds of food, art and science collide in stunningly futuristic fashion at a Chicago restaurant At Chicago’s Moto restaurant, executive chef Homaro Cantu laughs loudly as he describes his current wheeze – balloons inflated with carbon dioxide, then collapsed by being dunked in liquid nitrogen, which then inflate spontaneously at the table. ‘I want dining at Moto to be a great art experience, like going to the opera,’ he grins. He already offers diners one of two ten-course tasting menus based on their choice of pills: one red, one blue. Fancy some hot ice-cream? It’s already a reality at Moto. Levitating hor d’oeuvres? Cantu is working with liquid nitrogen and helium to make food float. Cantu has recently began trials on the first steaks cooked by the kind of high-powered laser beam more commonly used in surgery or to emasculate British secret agents. This way, Cantu envisages serving up filet mignon rare on the outside, but a little more cooked on the inside. Theoretically, the laser will make it far easier to cook the steak perfectly every time. If it works as well as his initial trials suggest, he aims to make laser cooking a bigger part of his menu, even using it to bake bread with crust inside the loaf.