In the fantastical tale of “Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory,” we meet edible rainbow drops, a chocolate river, lickable fruit-flavored wallpaper and a piece of “three-course dinner” gum that takes a curious Violet Beauregarde on a wild chew through creamy tomato soup, roast beef with baked potato and a slice of blueberry pie. Of course, the crux comes when Violet turns violet and balloons into a giant blueberry, but Wonka knows he can’t have reward without a little risk.
In Chicago’s meatpacking district of Fulton Market, something similar is taking place. An unknown chef by the name of Homaro Cantu (the name as published has been corrected here and in subsequent references in this text) is stirring up a ruckus at the months-old restaurant Moto, not seen since the opening of Evanston’s taste-twisting Trio.
If you’ve read the reviews, or talked to anyone who has been there, surely you’ve heard about servers in lab coats, rice balls injected with a suspiciously crimson sauce, spiral-handled flatware encasing a sprig of fresh thyme, or even the live Japanese river crab cooked before your eyes in a Cantu-patented polymer box.
Diners looking for a simple roasted chicken, look elsewhere. This food is the dawn of a new day.
With Moto, 27-year-old Cantu has joined a list of tradition-rattling contemporaries–Trio’s talented young chef Grant Achatz, New York’s Wylie Dufresne of the slick WD-50, Spain’s Ferran Adria of El Bulli.
For whatever reason, these names, this food, incites such reaction in people and so much passion in response that you will never meet a foodie without an opinion of the new avant-garde gastronomy. No one dines at these restaurants and walks out shrugging that it was so-so. They either love it or hate it, with little in between. In playing around with ideas, textures, temperatures and perceptions of what food should be, these chefs are not trying to break though a glass ceiling. They want to burn the house down and start anew, from the foundation up.
“The foundation of excellence should never be lost,” says Cantu. “Attention to detail, proper seasoning, understanding your raw products, these are all essential. Beyond that, my vision of gastronomy cannot be anyone else’s.”
Spoken like a true Trotter alum. Not surprisingly, Cantu worked in the world-famous Charlie Trotter’s kitchen for four years prior to Moto, a stint that started with a simple knock.
“At 22 I decided I wanted to work for Charlie,” says Cantu, who hails from Portland, Ore. “I sold most of my things, packed a bag, got on a plane, arrived in Chicago and knocked on the back door of the restaurant. When Chef Matthias [Merges, the chef de cuisine] answered I said, ‘Hi, my name is Omar and I came all the way across the country to work here and I’m not going to work anywhere else.’ ” After a two-day trial period, Cantu was hired.
But the story behind what’s on the plate at Moto goes back much further than Trotter’s. As a child, Cantu was a science geek, obsessed with fire, chemical reactions and the mischief knowledge can lead to. He set his mother’s kitchen on fire at 10 by mixing boiling water with hot butter. In 7th grade he won a science contest by building a Pepsi bottle car, filling it with sodium bicarbonate and tartaric acid, adding water, capping the bottle and then watching the cap pop off while the car was propelled about 20 feet. Food came into play at 13, when he started work in an Iraqi-owned tandoori parlor, “which I loved because I thought it was so cool that they could make chicken that red.”
He started at Atwater’s in Portland while still in high school, convincing Chef Mark Gould to hire him at age 17, and from there hopped around kitchens for a time before arriving in Chicago. After four years at Trotter’s, he says, it was time to move on, and he left–with no plans to speak of. A week later, he got a call from Marco Silva, a Trotter management alum looking to find a chef for a new project generated by Joseph Devito, owner of Taylor Street’s La Vita and Chicago’s Busy Burger. “The minute Homaro walked in, I knew there was something there,” says Devito. “He was very humble, driven, passionate. But after that first meeting, where he’s talking about magnetic utensils and polymer boxes, I went home thinking, ‘What am I getting myself into?'”
Well, to “a nice Italian boy from the neighborhood,” as DeVito calls himself, food pretty far removed from the spaghetti at Little Italy’s venerable Tufano’s. But Devito put his trust in Cantu as they opened the first restaurant in the city to feature a degustation-only menu, that is, serving a fixed, multi-course meal determined each week by the chef. The five, seven, 10, or 18 courses are delivered in a setting that is intentionally stark but stylish. Chocolate brown chairs, caramel banquettes, unadorned white walls; an unobtrusive design that makes it easy to focus on the plate–although what’s on it could grab attention in a Jordan Mozer room.
Fennel comes in four incarnations–a slushy granite, a cubed gelee, a salad and a candy. Hot, caramelized cucumber soup is encased in cucumber sorbet that is molded to resemble a glazed cucumber; a simultaneous hot-cold sensation. Scarlet runner bean ice cream is frozen into bean shapes and served with toasted rice sorbet formed into individual rice grains,; it makes a beans and rice that literally melts in your mouth. Pork belly is cooked sous vide (Cryovac-sealed and poached in water) and served with crispy housemade pork rinds. “Spaghetti” strands are made from white truffle ice cream. And with an ever-changing menu, by the time you’re reading this, these dishes will be oh-so-last-week.
“Creations are rotated out every week,” says Cantu. “We have to stay on top of this, we can never let up and that’s the challenge. The staff meets every night to discuss new ideas, with the only rule being don’t give me something that’s been done before because that’s a waste of everyone’s time.”
Ideas tossed around in these meetings of the minds include edible menus, sonic sous vide (using the same technology as sonic-powered washing machines), a dome cloche that makes food “magically” appear on a seconds-ago bare plate, floating food that levitates on a sphere held in place by fan speed. Silly? Maybe, but since when was originality and creativity required to be serious? “Where this thing’s going, who knows,” says Cantu, grinning like a Cheshire cat. “It’s just too much fun to stop.” Below, Cantu shares two of his dessert recipes.
CHOCOLATE RICE PUDDING MADE YOUR WAY
Four servings
3/4 cup jasmine rice
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
Pinch kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon cocoa powder
1/4 cup dark chocolate, grated into fine shavings (about 1 1/2 ounces)
Grapeseed or canola oil for frying
Powdered sugar, as needed
1. Bring rice and 1 1/4 cup water to a simmer in a 3- quart saucepan, cover with lid, reduce heat and cook for 24 minutes. Rinse rice in cold water, drain well and spread out on a sheet pan lined with a baking mat or parchment paper. Dry out in oven at 170 degrees for 45 minutes.
2. While the rice is drying out in the oven, bring milk, cream, vanilla bean and salt to a scald. Turn off the heat, stir in cocoa powder and chocolate, stirring until chocolate is completely melted. Strain through a fine sieve or simply remove vanilla bean if a sieve is unavailable. Set aside. Keep warm.
3. Remove rice from oven and separate so that grains are individual. Pour 1 1/2 inches of oil into a deep-sided saucepan and heat to 380 degrees. Fry rice in several batches, taking care because oil will spatter up as rice is added. Cook for 1 minute until rice “pops” like rice crispies. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. Generously sprinkle with powdered sugar, tossing to coat evenly.
4. Divide rice into four bowls and serve the hot chocolate mixture alongside in small pitchers. Have guests pour the chocolate over the rice, which will absorb the liquid slowly to their desired texture, thus being made “your way.”
SAFFRON FENNEL SLURPEE AND CANDY
Four servings
For the slurpee:
1 fennel bulb (with stems removed, about 6 ounces)
1 teaspoon fennel seed
1/2 teaspoon anise seed
1 star anise, ground
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon olive oil
Pinch of sea salt
Pinch of saffron
2 large celery stalks
3 tablespoons pastis or other licorice-flavored aperitif
For the candy:
1 fennel bulb, stemmed and end trimmed off
1 cup water
6 tablespoons sugar
Pinch of saffron
1/2 teaspoon fennel pollen (*see note below)
Pinch sea salt
1. Preheat oven to 185 degrees.
2. With the stems removed, shave fennel bulb into paper-thin slices by using a mandoline set with the blades adjusted for slicing very thin shavings. (Or optionally slice by hand using extreme caution.) Transfer to a medium-sized bowl.
3. Lightly toast the fennel seed and anise seed in a small pan over medium heat until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Transfer to a coffee grinder or mortar and pestle along with the star anise, grind into a fine powder and add to the shaved fennel.
4. Add lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and saffron and mix until well blended. Place the mixture on a sheet of plastic wrap and wrap tightly. Wrap in four more layers of plastic wrap (five layers total). Place the fennel packet in a small roasting pan and cover with boiling water. Transfer to the oven and poach the mixture for five minutes (add several minutes cooking time if fennel was cut by hand), turning the packet once or twice during cooking. Remove mixture from plastic wrap and puree in blender until smooth, adding a small amount of water if necessary. Pour mixture into an ice cube tray and freeze.
5. For the candy, cut twelve 1 1/2 inch x 1/2 inch pieces of fennel bulb. Place fennel pieces, water, sugar and saffron into a saucepan and gently mix. Heat over medium heat until the syrup begins to simmer and sugar is dissolved reduce the heat to medium-low, and maintain a temperature of 190 degrees on a candy thermometer for two hours. The syrup will barely move and should not be simmering. Do not stir the mixture anymore after this point. As the syrup begins to reduce in 45 minutes to an hour, decrease the heat to low. With a pair of tongs or a fork, remove fennel pieces from pan, place on a wax paper-lined baking sheet to dry out in the oven on lowest temperature at 170 degrees. Once dried and candy-like, about 30 to 40 minutes, remove from oven and sprinkle with fennel pollen and sea salt.
6. Feed the celery stalks into a juicer to extract the juice. (Alternately puree the celery in a blender or food processor with 1-2 tablespoons of water, strain the juice from the pureed celery by pressing down on the mixture and extracting the juice. Discard the remaining celery pulp).
7. Transfer all the frozen slurpee cubes to a plastic ziplock bag. Add celery stalk juice and pastis, close the bag. Gently crush the mixture with a mallet or heavy object–or move it about with your hands to mix it up. Portion out slurpee mixture in 4 small cups and top with three pieces of fennel candy. Can be served with a small straw for a tasty sorbet course.
*Note: Fennel pollen, which comes from the dried flower of the plant, is available at The Spice House in Old Town and Evanston.
