Integrating technology into a meal

[gfron1]

Yeah - no worries. To me this is all about brainstorming. Lots of cool fun ideas, but at the end of the day who knows what will stick. I want to push into new territory like I do with my food, so the more outlandish the idea, the better...at this point in the process. My next stop is my uber-geek friend who will know about all of the gadgets that have yet to hit the market.

[gfron1]

uber geek is on a roll. He threw a handful of ideas at me with many more to come:

Super magnets - think hovering plates with foams

Class III lasers - think laser shoots across table piercing cocoa butter orbs filled with...

Ultra violet - think raw meat cooks in front of your eyes

Air foam - weightless, holds heat for many, many hours...not sure how this could be used

Non-Newtonian liquid - think food trapped in liquid as guests figure out how to get in

He gave me more but I didn't even know if he was speaking English at that point.

[kitchenhacker]

Avoid the cell phone thing... I think it would be disruptive to have people pulling out their phones. I'd emphasize things that enhance the meal without disrupting it.

A bunch of cool ideas so far. Projecting information on a wall (or setting up a big screen) would be good. A soundtrack could work.

Automated fans set to send certain aromas to the diners at different points?

Hmmm... taking feedback from diners and processing it so that it turns into some sort of art?

Webcast the dinner?

[gfron1]

I'm kicking this dog - I set the date for July 18th. My geek friend has been working with me and we have some fun tech to integrate which I'll share later. Any new thoughts?

And for the business type folks - any suggestions for good web conferencing services (preferably free) that will allow for multiple images and text display?

[nickrey]

One theme that is coming through loud and clear is to avoid any gimmick that detracts from the eating experience.

Heston Blumenthal's sound of the sea works because it evokes on an emotional level the sensations associated with his memories of eating and the beach.

The question is how do you make technology enhance the overall experience. How can you make people relive emotional highs to really kick the eating experience up a notch?

The other way that technology is used is to violate our normal assumptions about food (think the El Bulli olives that look and taste like green olives but squish in your mouth).

Technology is a way of achieving these outcomes but it is a tool rather than the end in itself.

Let us know what you are thinking of serving and I'm sure we can come up with some ideas along these lines.

[Chris Hennes]

As food-lovers I think we get caught up in the "everything must enhance the food" aspect of an event: it's all about the food. But I think we could look at it differently; I think you could treat the gathering as a social event, with the food there to enhance the event, not necessarily to be the focus of it. Taking a more holistic approach, the technology and the food work could together as equals to promote an entertaining evening. Don't stress out about "distracting" from the food, etc. Have fun! Push the limits, see what works! Maybe the food is only a tool to make the evening enjoyable as well.

As for collaborative tools that you may be able to leverage at the event, check out the folks at http://www.37signals.com : they have a number of slick tools for working together, and most of them have free demos, etc. Maybe you can incorporate some of this sort of technology.

[gfron1]

I'll share the very preliminary draft menu as long as Verjuice promises not to read any further since she is coming down.......

And for anyone who hasn't seen my previous tasting menus, I lean toward molecular gast techniques, and a heavy emphasis on locally source, very crude ingredients - by crude I mean things that others would not normally consider using.

1. Beet lollipops with horseradish coating - the beet center will be pure liquid with a cocoa butter shell. I'm debating this dish because it has serious potential to cover a guest in beet juice and thus ruining their night and my dry cleaning bill.

2. Veg terrine (I'll see what the farmers market has that morning)

3. Gazpacho Boba drink - the cucumber will be made into pea sized balls and served with boba straw.

4. Jicama spahgettini...not sure where this is going yet, but I want to do a sugar syrup blanching of the jicama.

5. Monkfish ceviche, roasted corn slaw, avocado foam, basil oil, lemongrass vinegar shooter

6. Bison tenderloin - I'm looking for a technique to cook the bison in clay or failing that, salt.

7. Local goat milk - we have our first producer starting up this year and her stuff is pretty good. I"ll have her tie mine in small croquettes wrapped in local herbs, drizzled with local honey. I"m debating freeze drying one of the disks for each guest.

8. Tomato dessert sampler - sorbet, pudding cake & ? using heirlooms, sugar cello wrap

9. Chocolate lolli - same as dish one except white truffle infused chocolate pudding

10. A dish of four liquid spheres - not sure about this yet either, just know that in our town spheres are still cool and unique so I'm still putting them out to much delight.

[nickrey]

Nice looking menu.

I’m thinking things like:

Introductions to dishes

• providing information about the provenance of the dishes

• featuring small elements of dishes building up to the final product

• working on palate (cleaning, priming) to gain maximum effect of flavour; this could complement or contrast with the dish

• multimedia presentations on evolution of the dishes (think El Bulli-type creativity timelines in multimedia format)

Presentation of dishes

• lights go down, dishes appear, various different lightings of dishes

• releases of scents

• vapours from dry ice or (harmless) chemical reactions

• use technology to enhance the sensory experience: things like amplifying the crunch of chips making them seem more crisp

Evaluation of dishes

• Get them thinking about the dishes: what was in them, what dominated, which flavours went well together (use technology to collect or quantify the ratings, feed them back, gain a consensus) – use keypad, scoring device (use pocket computers as data entry devices)

• Get them thinking about memories that were evoked in the dishes; when was the first time they tried something like that, what was the experience, how has it affected their approach to food.

I’d avoid:

• Pictures of the food product prior to cooking (brings up memories of that scene from "Restaurant at the end of the universe" where the talking animal recommends various parts of its body to the diners)