inventolux

So are you saying that as a reviewer on assignment, (in cognito) you would give the restaurant an opportunity to "Just feed me. Bring me whatever you think is best." And if so, on average, is the experience more or less desirable? I dont think every restaurant should offer all tasting menus. This wouldnt work for fast paced lunch crowds and the world is too busy to spend 5 hours a day getting descriptions of food. But I would like to see more people at least asking the establishment to "Just feed me. Bring me whatever you think is best". It shows a bond of trust in the team and builds good relationships between the establishment and the diner. I believe that Brillat Savrin and had it right when he invited guests over and just entertained him to the best of his ability. There was much more going on than just consumption. There was an idea of bringing someone over to experince not just his vision in gastronomy, but himself as a person. Im not saying that I should pull up a chair and have a glass of vino with your table, im just saying the divide between guest and establishment seems to be closing, and I feel we must close it more. Currently Chicago has more degustation menu only restaurants than any city in the world. Something is working, the guests are feeling more comfortable in letting us play music, rather than just changing the score. True, those guests werent paying customers in Brillats day, and that hill may be too great to evercome. But its nice to feel like someone invitied you over for dinner. And yes, your post was nicely un PC, and thats what keeps the communication lines open.

First I would like to say that you are a great reviewer and my wife is your biggest fan. So thank you for taking time to answer my pet peeve below. I believe its a tragedy to see a restaurant get a bad review because the reviewer based the establishments abilities on one or three dishes. True, in a tasting menu format its not likely to enjoy every course, however the probability of one having a more pleasurable experince is much greater due to the fact that you are engaging in an entire production piece rather than leaving the show when its half over. We as gastronomers may never advance in many ways unless we are allowed more creative freedom. From the mom and pop operations to the post modern innovators I KNOW we are on the brink of a consumable discovery greater than any of us could have imagined. Do you support this philosophy or am I just another ego driven cook looking to satisify my own PR hunger? Please, be politically incorrect, its what keeps me going.

I like the idea of growing animal products in a lab. Perfect cuts of meat, low cholesterol and no thumbless victims. Oh yeah.....its also in season on the polar caps!

Nice article. Hopefully I can close the restaurant on a tuesday so I can eat there. After knowing Elliot for all these years I feel like a nitwit not experiencing his vision in food yet. Everything I have seen here looks great. Keep it up.

We need a constitution for everything that doesnt have a thumb. Equal rights dammit!

We have had them for about 2 weeks. They are in a new dessert course. Its fettucini with alba truffles, cream sauce and pesto crostini. I love old school.

We now serve garlic bread with some beef as a savory main. Im all about bread, just not THAT bread. It has its place, in a tasting menu, its place would be too filling for the diner to adequetely explore all menu items without feelin like a turducken.

4 ways to levitate food: Type a: Negative ion propulsion, most objects, including food have a positive ion charge, if you give it a negative ion charge, they repel. Solids, liquids and gases. Type b: foams created with a mixture of helium and nitrous oxide Type c: using a calculated amount of cfm's to push objects upward type d: using the meissner effect with superconductors and liquid nitrogen (also a futuristic type of "perpetual motion" All of these forms are still being tweeked for final dishes and I suspect will be complete and on the menu by mid january.

Yes, this is true to a certain extent. This was a concept we had put on the menu back in march. The procedure was the simplest we could come up with to execute a "hot ice cream". The procedure was very simple to create "chilled apple pie with hot ice cream"....... create two gelled coponents and one textural "foil" 1. gelled nutmeg & cinnamon ice cream 2. gelled granny smith apple pressed with the skins 3. pulverized "pie crust" Procedure: 1. warm the anglaise and inject it into a 25ml pipette and chill it 2. warm the apple mixture and top off the anglaise and chill it to set it, leaving about a quarter inch for the pulverized pie crust 3. pack the pie crust in the top of the pipette and chill 4. to order place the pipette into a bath of hot water at 134f for 15 seconds. The water level should come just below the anglaise level. The anglaise will heat up, the apple pie will stay chilled and it will be ready for the diner to consume. This procedure began to wear out its time. One way we strive for new procedures and ultimately new menu items is to take an existing dish and create a new dish with same exact ingredients and flavor profiles of the previous one. The maki is current form of an earlier idea. Simply put, it looks and tastes like maki. This is how the computer age advances so fast begin with a simple transistor and before you know it you are creating the next generations of microprocessors. Not a bad template for gastronomers. First what does hot ice cream mean? Is it spicy? Is it an increase in temperature? Is it a temperature contrast, hot and frozen within the same entity? Is it the texture of ice cream that has the ability to be heated to high temperatures without melting? To take this final question a step further can we take this form and make it "melt" like ice cream even at 140 degrees because of a reaction with human saliva? These are all questions that are all almost answered today at moto. The earlier post is a procedure how we have created 4 types of hot ice cream - one new one since my last post. Here they are once again - 1. Hot in tempereature with the texture of frozen ice cream that does not melt in the mouth but maintains a "soft serve ability" as high as 350f. 2. Frozen exterior with a heated liquid center (as high as 90c) that the guest cracks open to reveal the hot liquid center. 3. A sphere of ice cream that when frozen, acts just like ice cream with a meltaway capability. Only one hemisphere is heated to 140f and the other is frozen and it doest melt until it breaks down with saliva. 4. The first generation pipette method. Just this past wednesday I recieved a surprising phone call from chef Alberto Adrias translator. He said that alberto wanted to come over to see this hot ice cream. He sat down for a gtm and we demonstrated hot ice cream types 1 & 2. I with all honesty never thought anyone from el bulli would ever come to moto. It was surreal, humbling, exciting, nail biting and a small dream come true for my pastry chef, Benjamin Roche, the entire moto team, and myself. All four forms should be on our "thats not really ice cream scoops" menu item in the near future. It may also wind up in the New York Times article due out the first or second week of December in the technology section. Keep an eye out, there are also some new thigs the writer may cover that for us at moto, in my opinion, are way more exciting than hot ice cream, and offer many more possobilities for human consumption and a more cerebral dining experience.......to be continued.

True, food must taste great. I believe Chef Achatzs language of gastronomy is some of the most delicious food I have ever had. This is essential for repeat diners and Chef has many. I believe when someone REALLY commits to the basic fundamentals..... a) delicious, well defined flavor structure that is desirable b) forgetting everything else you know .....you can end up with tasteful combinations that conventional preparations arent tapping into. Sensualness and the intellectualization of consumption are equals and soon, one can no longer exist without the other. The "tricks" are guiding us into a world we have only begun to understand.

We have made a unique discovery this week...............levitating food. It REALLY levitates!!!!!! I feel like a kid in a candy store right now. And no, Moto will NOT close. We have chose to be diffrent and find our own vision, that is risky in a risky business, but business is great and we are moving forward at a more rapid pace than yesterday. I realize I have placed myself in the publics opinion, so far the opinion has been very positive. I was a bit sad to discover that there were egulleters that werent supportive of our vision. I have nothing but admiration for anyone that attemts to open a restaurant in this country and understands the risks involved. I knew this forum as a beacon of idea sharing and thats how I will strive to maintain it. Oh well, everyone has an opinion, most food savvy people know ours and I can certainly learn to respect theirs. News from ground zero: Oh yeah, we are also collaborating with some curators for the Smithsonian museum. They are interested in putting our utensils in one of their exhibits. We will be submitting 26 prototypes of utensils the world has never seen. (all of which have been under us patent for quite some time) Im thrilled we have the opportunity to share our vision to people that may not have the opportunity to experience moto.

Hello everyone, I am trying to obtain a gift for a friend that will be travelling to Provence. I was just wondering if anyone knew of any noteworthy culinary schools that I could purchase say.... a two day class on the gastronomy of provence. Thanks a lot for any help. - Omar -

Its the only way to experience a progressive chefs vision in the food revolution. One cannot judge chef Bowles food on one plate, one must see the entire symphony.

We do have a number of diverse flavor/temperature/texture profiles for hot ice cream. I would be here all day explaining the procedures and special patented equipment I have used to create hot ice cream. The work began last year in august when I was waiting for moto to develop. I spent countless hours in my kitchen at home working with various gelling agents like carrageenan, sodium alginate..........below is a post from last year during my menu formulation period for moto...... Posted on: Aug 27 2003, 02:13 PM member Posts: 504 Joined: 7-May 03 Member No.: 8,428 You can follow these instructions to create edible polymer strands. The ingredients necessary to produce the "caviars" are more commonly known as sodium alginate (sold here) and calcium chloride (sold here). The alginate/calcium chloride reaction is fairly easy to execute. The formula has existed in the industrialized food processing/preservation world for nearly 40 years now and is commonly used for maintaining freshness in transporting foodstuffs that dont freeze well. Then a post later in the discussion.................. inventolux Posted on: Aug 30 2003, 05:13 PM member Posts: 504 Joined: 7-May 03 Member No.: 8,428 If you get a little crafty, you can create pouches of liquid suspended inside other pouches of liquid. This process along with the use of liquid nitrogen, dry ice, calcium extracted from other "non-food" world sources, gelling agents like carrageenan and gellan have enabled the production of hot ice cream. Also my collaboration with a federally funded group of 15 scientists and engineers located here have enabled the production for the following options in producing hot ice cream. 1. A "scoop" of ice cream that consists of a frozen exterior and a hot liquid center. 2. A "scoop" if non-dairy vegan product that can be heated to 155F that has an ice cream texture and flavor. 3. A "scoop" of dairy product with the presence of anti-coagulants and the transfer of heat through a chemical process. 4. A "scoop" of product that can be frozen, then microwaved for 20 seconds to produce something that can be popped into your mouth like candy that has the texture of ice cream with heat applied to it. I would like to take a minute to address my new teammates....Deep Labs. "Deep Labs" has helped pave the way to produce hot ice cream (US patent pending) on a mass scale. They are also working on developing the inventolux company with its numerous patents. The company has nothing to do with food, they have engineers from every walk of life from an astrophysicist, to a plastics engineer, a number of pro-engineer software savvy professionals, a rocket scientist, and many more. (They have developed 90% of the surveillance equipment for the FBI.) This is a major shift for me. Growing up I always read popular mechanics and entered every science competition in school, so hanging around these guys talking about how to make food lighter than air is complete euphoria. Watching leaders like chef achatz, adria and many others makes me realize more companies like deep labs should be more gastronomic focused and working directly with chefs that have an infatuation with science and science fiction. They have an online magazine called Design Engine. Check it out, its cool stuff, and tons of fun. -Omar-

I heard moto may be on the season opener. Just a rumor floating about for a few weeks now.

I think the entire staff should pool tips. Front and back of the house. Teamwork means the entire team.

Dinner at trio sunday night..............beautiful. My top 4 experiences in my career have all happened at trio over the past 2 1/2 years. Its been awesome watching a restaurant achieve so much in such a short time.

Forget everything you have learned, then taste it.

Went to san soo gap san after work at 1:30 am. A tasty experience. The grills were hot, the brews were chilled and my wife returned with me 3 days later. The owner was hilarious to add an edge of excitement as well.

i love this idea. anything that can redevelop the "dining experience" (TM charlie trotter) is good in my book. i wonder if i want to completely replace the waiter/ess thing though. strikes me that you operating costs will be higher if you have all chefs in the place. this comment is based completely on a possibly completely misguided belief that chefs earn more money than waiter/esses. also, does actually being able to create the food necessarily mean you'll be comfortable interacting with guests about it...when i think about some of the chefs that i have met i think it's not the most sociable of professions. hastens to add, not you chef. and then i think about really great waiter/esses and wonder if they'd be any better at what they do if they cooked the food. This may start some contraversy............. An average of 3600 students graduate from culinary schools in north america every year. This poses some long term problems/advantages for the industry. More culinary professionals will likely open restaurants than ever before. Do we contine to follow the template for restaurants in the past? ( 1 out of every 8 fails in the first 2 years.) Or do we take advantage of this stastistic and raise the bar for dining as a whole? I would like to see fewer restaurants and more high quality dining establishments in the future. High turnover and low wages have plagued the business as long as it has existed. A pooling of tips throughout an entire staff would increase a chefs (in the dining room and in the kitchen) wage by almost 20% immediately. An opportunity for a chef to see the other side is something my entire team is very excited about. This provides an avenue to increase the overall quality of life for an energetic culinarian. Could the industry benefit? Yes. Fact: Chefs on average make 36% less than front of the house employees in restaurants with a check average higher than 40.00 and they put in many. many more hours.................................does this make any sense? No. Obviously a chef that is not comfortable in making this transition wont be suitable for table service. However a classically trained chef may not be comfortable in preparing edible menus as well. It takes a special breed, and the rest will fall into place. If a chef is willing to mop floors and wash dishes for the guest, what lengths will a chef go in front of the guest? Whatever it takes. So far the results have been astounding.

Interesting you mention steak diane. We have been working on an edible portrait of a steak diane that tastes like a steak diane. Im sure the ceasar and crepes suzette could work as well. Pictures taken tableside of course:)

Kind of off the subject..............just wanted some feedback on this one...... I have been begun filtering chefs into our dining room as service members. By next year we hope to have a team of 30 chefs that rotate from the front of the house into the back every 3 to 6 months. Sort of morphing the restaurant into a 100% chef driven atmosphere. My GM and I are finding this to be a more creative environment with culinary minded individuals executing more "risky" techniques. We are observing a number of benefits from this, they are: 1. Eventually tipping out the entire staff (higher wages for chefs, the entire industry could benefit from this one) 2. Expanding our efforts with interactive cuisine by observing what the guest is least expecting 3. Creating a new profession - the "gastronomic professional" not chefs or cooks but individuals that are able to have vision over an entire entity There are many other benefits but I just wanted to know your opinion here. Thanks

Alinea will no doubt be one of the greatest restaurants of our time. Im excited to see how it adds to the expansion of the culinary mind. Chicago will be the culinary hotbed of ideas for the world soon enough. With great respect, congrats chef.

Journalists not ethically honest? This is nuts. Has anyone else heard about this?