Mo Mo Mo

Went to a dinner last night at a place called Moto for a celebration dinner. Moto is what you would call an occasion restaurant; nobody goes there for a casual meal. Dinner takes approximately 4 hours and consists of a 14 course tasting menu. We've been there once before and we were hooked when they showed us the menu and then told us we could eat it.

Moto is one of those places that seeks to reimagine food. Reimagining things is not very hard- you stop thinking about something one way and pick another way. This works most easily for things like superheroes and mythical beings, but it's not that hard to think of something in a different way, like "wouldn't it be cool if...?" Food, of course, is not imaginary and therefore presents some real life difficulties if you wish to go beyond simply the imaginary part to actually serving the food to someone.

Not only do you need the skills to create the reimagined food, you have to do it in a way that would be enjoyable to eat. It takes an understanding of science and flavor that is unusual. So what they do in this place is say, for example, wouldn't it be cool if we could distill a caesar salad down to 5 cc of liquid that tastes exactly like a salad? Or make a printed menu that's made from and tastes like barbecued chicken? Or something that appears to be a red egg yolk that bursts with red wine?

Aside from adding flavors, there aren't a lot of physical processes that you can perform on food, since we're not talking genetic engineering here. You can make it hot or cold, dry it or wet it (or dry something, reconstitute it with some liquid other than its own, then dry it again to concentrate the flavors). You need a lot of liquid nitrogen and a heavy duty dryer. And the trick is to do those things in a way that makes something interesting to look at and delicious. So dinner consists of 14 little things that may or may not be what they appear.


There were too many courses to go on about everything, so I'll give you a few examples. They brought out a steel rack with small ice cream cones sitting in them. What's inside the cones looks like vanilla ice cream with whipped cream and some caramel sauce. What it consists of is lobster salad over a layer of roasted corn salad, topped with a corn puree and lobster bisque distilled to a point where it looks like caramel. The cone itself, which is slightly sweet like the waffle cone it resembles, is made from uni, or sea urchin. It was one of the most delicious things I've ever tasted. 


Another cool one was the zen garden. You've probably seen those little desktop things with sand an smooth stones and a small rake to arrange them. This one was about 3 x 4 inches with white sand made of dehydrated apple resting on some kind of thick peach compote with white pebbles made of camembert cheese surrounding apricot and brown pebbles made of some other kind of cheese coated in a dark chocolate powder. You eat it with a small spoon and it all tasted spectacular.

Other highlights included shellfish (all on halfshell and prepared in different ways- my favorite being a dusting or a reddish brown powder that turned out to be unusually crunchy bacon) on a bed of seaweed with liquid nitrogen ladled in to suggest fog and highlight the aroma of the seaweed.

We also had a "foraging" course where a variety of mushrooms were arrayed on a small (inedible) tree branch with woodsy smells courtesy of a garland of pine and rosemary and cinnamon heated to smoking temperature on the table with a blowtorch. And spring lamb, prepared 6 different ways and served on a lamb bone with a very shiny cleaver embedded in it. And when Ronnie and I were served a bourbon barrel stave with 4 different cocktails in concentrated gelled form, our underage companion got a bowl of something that resembled Rice Krispies but was not, although it was made from the same ingredients. Who knew you could puff a grain of rice up to the size of a potato chip?

And of course, "Smell The Glove," a Spinal Tap tribute with a globe full of smoke and a leather glove that you wear and sniff while eating a dark chocolate hand on some kind of ice cream. By this time I had consumed a decent amount of wine and my attention to detail was beginning to wane.

Each course was presented and described in detail by a waiter who slightly resembled Kurt from Glee. We arrived at 6:15 and left at 10:30.  The cost? Dinner for 3 was more than roundtrip airfare for my wife and I to come here. But I'll be remembering the meal (and hopefully the birthday girl  will as well) long after the flight is forgotten.