Futuristic Food

Photo courtesy of Stephen Orlick and Homaro Cantu A polymer box can cook your fish right on in front of you.

Interactivity is one element that Cantu is introducing in his restaurant and one way he is doing this is by having patrons participate in cooking their food. If you order one type of fish, the waiter will bring you a clear polymer box that can retain heat for hours on end. Boiling water and lemon is placed in the box along with the piece of fish, and the cube is then covered so that you can watch the fish as it bakes.

Cantu also plans to levitate an entire meal in front of diners using superconductors and handheld ion particle guns. So far, he has managed to use this technique to suspend salt and sugar in mid-air. Helium may also prove to be useful for floating lighter menu items. One dessert - created by filling a sphere with fruit juice and spinning it, while applying liquid nitrogen to form a thin, frozen shell - may be able to hang in front of diners if helium can be injected in the shell.

To turn his inventions into reality, Cantu works with a product development consultancy called Deep Labs. He relies on weekly design meetings with their aerospace and mechanical engineers to brainstorm the latest off-the-wall ideas. These ideas are not limited to just the food techniques, but also include Moto's restaurant décor, which he prefers to keep simple so that diners focus on the food.

By commercializing his inventions, Cantu hopes to make them useful to other sectors. He envisions that some utensils he has designed will be used for military meals and hopes that his experiments with food will lead to chance discoveries - perhaps he will discover food that can be created in cold temperatures and can grow on Pluto? Now that would truly be futuristic...

For more information:

Cantu Designs
http://www.cantudesigns.com/

Moto Restaurant
http://www.motorestaurant.com/flash/index.html