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This is the closest thing I’ve ever seen
to the restaurant scene in the movie, “Brazil.” First,
read this article from The New York Times:
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When the Sous-Chef
Is an Inkjet
By David Bernstein (February 3,
2005)
CHICAGO—
 Homaro
Cantu's maki look a lot like the sushi rolls served at other
upscale restaurants: pristine, coin-size disks stuffed with
lumps of fresh crab and rice and wrapped in shiny nori.
They also taste like sushi, deliciously fishy and seaweedy.
But
the sushi made by Mr. Cantu, the 28-year-old executive chef
at Moto in Chicago, often contains no fish. It is prepared
on a Canon i560 inkjet printer rather than a cutting board.
He prints images of maki on pieces of edible paper made
of soybeans and cornstarch, using organic, food-based inks
of his own concoction. He then flavors the back of the paper,
which is ordinarily used to put images onto birthday cakes,
with powdered soy and seaweed seasonings.
At
least two or three food items made of paper are likely to
be included in a meal at Moto, which might include 10 or
more tasting courses. Even the menu is edible; diners crunch
it up into a bowl of gazpacho, creating Mr. Cantu's version
of alphabet soup.
Sometimes
he seasons the menus to taste like the main courses. Recently,
he used dehydrated squash and sour cream powders to match
a soup entree. He also prepares edible photographs flavored
to fit a theme: an image of a cow, for example, might taste
like filet mignon.
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In a scene from Terry Gilliam’s 1985
dystopic movie, “Brazil,”
restaurant patrons dine on green blobs of flavored mush. Accompanying
the mush on each plate, is a photograph of the food that mush
is supposed to taste like. I always thought this detail to be
brilliant. The film’s commentary on our society, or at least
my interpretation of it, is that the image has replaced the corporal,
the façade has replaced the real, and the artificial has
replaced the natural.
In today’s episode of reality
that surpasses parody, Chicago chef Homaro Cantu has outdone
Terry Gilliam. At Moto, the image is the food, but it is
still artificial (even though it is constructed of natural, organic
food-based inks). Wow.
Another thing that tickles my funny bone: That
such technology would be applied to sushi does not really surprise
me, since the Japanese love technology and fake things, and often
apply them to a food context (consider the plastic greens that
are often accompany sushi or maki rolls). And yet, this fake sushi
was not created by the Japanese but by a Chicago chef who I believe
is of Portuguese descent.
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