Purpose: To share a vision of “global gastronomy.”
Hypothesis: Diners will trek to an out-of-the-way restaurant charging up to $160 a person to eat such dishes as 114-degree scallop, textural foils of rice and white truffle ice cream spaghetti.
Experiment: Outfit servers in black lab coats. Issue diners magnetized forks and spoons. Feed them tiny squares of fennel-flavored agar. Awaken their senses with a virtual aroma box that emits a stream of black-truffled air.
The future of dining?
Perhaps. But it’s also the present at Moto, the new tasting-menu-only restaurant that’s striving “to challenge diners’ perceptions and expectations,” according to chef Homaro Cantu, who even provided customers with syringes to inject flavors into their food before deciding that “some diners just aren’t ready for that.”
What they are ready for, Cantu believes, is indulging in his vision, which is served up here on menus ranging from five courses (just a peek) to 18-20 courses (a panoramic view).
In fact, though most diners at the warehouse district spot choose the 10-course menu ($100), Cantu said he would like to more routinely offer 25 or more courses, to really put forth his ideas.
We apparently showed restraint–and respect for the Tribune’s budget–in choosing the seven-course menu when we dined at this minimal-to-the-max spot (a vase with a few stalks of bamboo was the sole adornment in the compact room) on a recent Saturday.
After having a sip or two of the wine we had toted along (it’s BYOB until Moto gets its liquor license), our meal started, as all the degustations do, with a course titled “amusing flat ware.”
Turns out Cantu (who chefed at Charlie Trotter’s) came to the restaurant with several patented inventions, including the aroma box; a clear cube that contains sea water and cooks fish atop your table; and the corkscrew-handled “herbaceous utensils,” into which he had stuffed a sprig of thyme for us to sniff while we nibbled a tiny radish and scallion salad off the fork and swept a bit of citrus salad and foam from the spoon. The implements had come to the table sort of suspended–via magnet–on metal plates.
You lost yet?
We hope not, because otherwise you would miss the “fennel in multiple forms,” served on a square white plate, which contained, in each of its corners: a piece of fennel candy in an edible wrapper (think Jolly Rancher ); a fennel slushie with a sprinkling of bee pollen; a bit of fennel, frisee and watercress salad; and the aforementioned agar cubes (official name: hot jelled hash).
As fennel lovers, we found this green quartet pretty amazing, and fun to eat too.
And so it went throughout the evening, as the peripatetic waitstaff paraded out, and earnestly explained, a string of avant-garde offerings. Highlights included an “inside out duck roll,” a delectable pile of duck confit and duck puree nestled beneath a cigar-shaped wonton containing a “secret sauce”; the diner’s job is to crack the wonton open and let the sauce runneth over.
This “deconstruction,” we learned, is all part of Cantu’s attempt to get diners to interact with the food, and better understand it.
The 27-year-old chef, as you might guess, “won numerous science awards in school,” he says.
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That may also explain the live sawagani crab, available upon request, for those having the fish that cooks in the cube as part of the 10- and 18-course menus. The small river crab is placed in the cube to bake–and die–before your eyes.
Only for serious diners, he warns.
And Cantu knows a thing or two about serious dining, having spent four years at Trotter’s, in both the front room and the kitchen. Moto’s general manager, Marco Silva, is also a Trotter’s alum.
But despite the personnel, degustation format and pristine ingredients the two restaurants have in common, Moto is clearly trying to push the envelope further–and seems willing to poke a little fun at itself. We even caught our waiter chuckling behind his chunky glasses as he explained some of the dishes.
So, will well-heeled foodies flock to Moto on a regular basis?
Conclusion: Still awaiting results of this weeks-old experiment.
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Moto is at 945 W. Fulton Market Ave.; 312-491-0058. Open for dinner Mon.-Sat. Tasting-menu prices $50-$160.