On a special evening during the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago Moto hosted a group of attendees at its molecular gastronomy lab near Fulton Market just west across Hwy 94 from downtown. Moto's Executive Chef/Owner Homaro Cantu and his Team of Gastro Engineers are known in the food world for industry-pushing culinary creations using new technologies typically found in industrial applications and science labs. To the savvy foodie or local Windy City dining enthusiast, the area neighborhood has long been a happening place; the area has a clear character about it.
You can feel through to the core the inner cogs of this beloved global city thriving away, passing on its grind from the past, adjusting for the future. W. Fulton Street is lined with up-kept, yet still dilapidating brick buildings brought to life with colorful tagging, many having large docking doors to facilitate the neighborhood's long-standing daily trading of meat, fish and flowers interspersed with new-wave dining, shopping and entertainment.
The chefs are all about new, cutting edge and think of cooking far outside the the average American housewife. Their trials and research is done to enhance the diner's experience providing palatable, outer-limit opportunities intended to evolve society's thought process around culinary science, human survival and the planet's sustainability. PlanetGreen.com has video clips of the Moto hosted show titled Future Food, which virtually brings viewers into the chefs' scientific kitchen to pull the curtain back on modern culinary innovation. But this night, this was our time to check it out in person.
Things kicked off with wine sampling and visual interpretations of what a finely rolled cigar that is actually a Cuban Pork Sandwich served in an ashtray might taste like. Brined pork shoulder is rolled up into collared greens like a true torcedor looking just as the nation's ubiquitous tobacco exports do resting in a ground poppy and sesame seed ash. The 'cigars' have an incredible smokey flavor, long lingering after completion - and no trade embargo here. I could've gone for a freshly muddled mojito to wash it down, but a Churton Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand did just the cooling trick.
The set of ten courses are titled so to stir our imagination of what each dish might possibly hold in store for us. Described as Reconstructed Corn, Dim Sum, Tongue & Cheek and Flores de Mayo, each presented with well-tended care to inspire our eyes as if each were competing on a pageant runway. I most related to the Forest Foraging course set on a short tree limb that appears to have fallen from the canopy top to find new life in the rich soil below. The top is laden with a mossy green carpet sauce with crevices lurking with delicate ‘grubs’. Treasurous morels lingered at the base of the limb, typical, enjoying the luscious vitamins of the forest floor. The shrooms were sautéed to a light crisp on the outside still moist inside giving what I can assume would be a bug-like crunch and burst to each bite.
Foraging for 'grubs' in this incredible presentation heralded fond memories of Pumbaa and Timon from Disney's Lion King. Hakuna Matata was what the warthog and meerkat duo told the lost Simba devastated from losing his father, running away from Pride Rock and hungry for a zebra, antelope or hippo. No worries is the motto, slippery and satisfying, the rare vegetable delicacies found on the wooden limb were slightly crunchy and seemingly pickled. They did not taste like chicken.
The semi poisonous fiddlehead fern could be found, the coil of green boiled 8-10 minutes to ensure safe consumption. At the NRA Show ProStart High School students shared this critical cooking detail during a live demonstration.
A Midwest favorite, corn was given a Mexican food vendor spin with this frozen cream base that tastes like the mayonnaise and hot sauce used to lather street corn cobs south of the border. The concoction was mostly sweet missing the traditional savory cojita cheese.
Dim Sum was delivered in a traditional Chinese-style bamboo steamer basket releasing a near opaque white fog from below the top layer of slits. On the top left is a bowel bun covered in a hoisin frosting giving a zesty flavor to the deep brown glaze, like a savory doughnut. Bowel buns are often used in replace of bread and are served with meats and fish to use for filling. You can see an example of a rib tip bowel bun sandwich in my 2011: Year of the Rabbit post where I shared a wonderful dinner with my Chinese team at Rong Ji in Shanghai.
The white pouch to the right tied up like a tiny present was made of oyster leaf, filled with pickled jicama and fluke, every bite Asian fresh and smooth.
We had the opportunity to 'flavor trip' as they say, fooling our palate with what is known as the Miracle Berry from West Africa. In the Flores de Mayo above, the planter was layered with a sour cream base on the bottom covered by a mole purée. We were directed to eat the left side with the yellow flower. Our palate should sense savory and terroir. We did.
Then we took a hit of the synsepalum dulcificum, or miracle berry, powder that contains a glycoprotein molecule called miraculin. After this is consumed somehow the savory and sour tastebuds are inhibited and food tastes sweeter. When we finished our right half of flowers, our tongues were shocked by how quickly the planter transformed to sweet, extracting the chocolate and cinnamon tones of the mole. By this time we had moved onto a Clos du los Siete red from Mendoza in Argentina. Typically a fruity, soft wine, it now tasted more like a port. It was strangely incredible!
This Moto experience of dining out was truly something special, a unique atmosphere of blue-lit shelves backed with Periodic Table of Elements symbols, clear glass canisters and beakers. Surrounded by a lovely bunch of food journalists and restaurant industry leaders, we enjoyed the suspense of novel flavors and textures engineered by the gastro inventors.
Each dish was fun, enlightening, imaginative and gave us all plenty to discuss. While Moto may not deliver the ideal dinner for one who prefers the basic meat, veggie and potatoes, the place and its creatives deserve to be given a whirl. It is an experience that I won’t soon forget and one that I’m eager to share again with friends visiting the Midwest.
Cantu plans to open a gastro lab at the recently opened Green Exchange, a sustainable building housing businesses focused on expanding environmental awareness and adoption for a more profitable and prosperous future. There the chef, with industry partners, will research food from a cutting-edge, science-based perspective with the goal of creating sustainable food solutions, quantity and quality, as well as foods with little sugar, thereby digging deeper into the chemistry of the miracle berry. Let's see where this modern Chicago work can take us.
I look forward to finding out more about this research. My buddy at Distant Village Packaging and I will visit you soon.
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