Grossing out customers with crazy kitchen concoctions and simultaneously saving the planet: This is the world of Homaru Cantu and Ben Roche. They are the chefs behind Moto, the Chicago restaurant famous for using science and experimentation to craft a menu full of the bizarre. They are also the hosts of Future Food, a series making its initial run on Planet Green through the end of May. The show features the two men challenging themselves and the other chefs on staff to cook the seemingly impossible with the help of some cutting-edge culinary technology.
In the pilot, our hosts try to make food that looks and tastes like seafood from other ingredients. Cantu coats watermelon—which he wants to turn into “tuna”—with spices and puts it into a Cryovac machine to pull in those flavors. Then a liquid nitrogen bath gives it a seared texture. Cantu and Roche discovered most of these techniques through trial and error. “There’s no handbook if you want to start replicating food,” Cantu says.
Many of the Future Food challenges border on silly, like making health food look like junk food. But for Cantu there is a bigger picture. He imagines popularizing fake tuna to solve the overfishing crisis, or recycling day-old bread into appealing new dishes to cut down on edible waste. But judging by the reactions when the two mad chefs take their creations to the people, not everyone is ready for watermelon seafood.
