Grand Tour Moto

It's been almost exactly one year since I last visited moto in Chicago. By now you've no doubt heard a lot more about chef Homaro Cantu, his laboratory-like kitchen, and futuristic food. But what you still may not know about Omar - as he's known to family, friends, and restaurant crew - which qualifies as both - is the truth and simplicity of his cuisine. Like all chefs, he's just trying to make his own good food. And as a great chef, he does so with openess, honesty, and integrity - inspiring the same qualities in his team.

I spent this past Saturday as Omar's guest in moto's kitchen. I lent a hand in mise en place - breaking down sweet Delicata squash from a grower in Wisconsin - and dipping small pucks of frozen watermelon juice into liquid nitrogen and then a cucumber juice and sodium alginate solution. During the full-house dinner service, for which I served ostensibly as a runner, the moto team surprised me with a 20-course gtm - Grand Tour Moto - their ultimate tasting menu. I ate at the place I feel most honoured to be allowed in any restaurant - at the pass in the kitchen.

So what's the food like? See for yourself.

Above is the Maki in the 4th dimension - wrapped in Omar's signature soon-to-be-patented, edible, flavoured, printed paper. What you don't see is Your tasting menu in the form of instant risotto - that's one of the many surprises I hope you will experience yourself.

After my first bite of maki, I told Omar that as much as I've read about this dish, I've not heard enough about how delicious it is. It's one of the many dishes that I would happily have as a meal. The roll sits on a togarashi mayo, its creamy heat followed by the crisp nori-flavoured wrapper that melts into the bluefin toro studded and pickled vegetable rice. Omar said the Maki may be in its last week on the menu.

Nitro cuitlacoche: cuitlacoche - or huitlacoche - is the delicacy also sometimes known as Mexican truffle. It grows within kernels of corn in the right conditions. (See Will's huitlacoche post on his blog Cooking Fire for more information and stunning photos.) Here it's pureed and smeared on the side of a bowl of warm corn soup and corn foam. At the table, popcorn is fished out of liquid nitrogen in a small copper pot with a sieve. When the popcorn's eaten immediately, it's addictively crunchy - not at all brain-freezingly cold but does create the surreal dragon-like vapour through the nose.

(A side note to cooks: at moto they've ingeniously rigged a self-foaming station by clamping an immersion blender to the side of a pot and a fixed object - in their case a pole. No more furiously foaming a la minute - the foam's ready when you are.)

Scallop & fruit salsa: a vanilla-battered and tempura-fried scallop with carbonated fruit salsa - pineapple and grapefruit with chives - with a rare, fish-fresh, maple-bourbon cured salmon roe.

Sweetbreads & cheese grits: a nugget of fried veal sweetbreads topped with cheese grits, skewered onto a pipette of warm, tangy chevre noir sauce.

(Sweetbreads, by the way, are not brains, as a few of my friends and family have recently told me they believed them to be. They are the no-better-sounding thymus glands - found at the top of the breastbone.)

Spanish Mackeral & orange: a pan-fried bite of Spanish mackeral with a carbonated orange half on sunchoke puree. I squeezed the carbonated orange juice into the dish and drank it separately.

At this point one of Omar's fish boxes was placed in front of me. It is oven hot with fish cooking inside and smoked paprika on top to release aroma.

Artichoke & macadamia: artichoke and balsamic nitro ice cream and a macadamia nut. One couple in the dining room liked this so much that they asked for seconds - and received it.

Sweet potato pie & veal: Old school meets new. Andre Soltner - chef/owner at the late, legendary Lutece in New York taught this vegetable-carving technique to one of moto's cooks at the French Culinary Institute. The succulent veal breast was cooked sous-vide - served with swaths of sweet potato pie puree.

Bass baked tableside with smoked paprika: in the foreground spoon are diced chanterelle mushrooms, behind are salicornes - also known as sea beans, sea asparagus, or sea pickles. They're naturally salty from seawater and crisp - and often sold pickled in jars in France. The bass is placed in the bowl, the grilled tomatillo broth - over which it has been cooking and is now reduced - is poured over as a piquant sauce.

Short rib & aromatic utensils: to the right is a rich, meaty morsel of short rib; to the left, deeply caramelised brussel sprouts. Omar told me the mint is meant to complement the wine pairing for this dish - I did not have wine. While the primary purpose for these utensils may be aroma, I could not stop stroking the sensually soft mint leaves.

Bacon, horseradish & amaranth: bacon-flavoured ice cream with a mild horseradish punch, puffed amaranth, and a sugar tuile with a fine layer of bacon and chives.

Beef with coffee & cocao nibs: the small dish in the corner comes to your table afire. Extinguished, it releases the aroma of smoking coffee beans. The beef is remarkably tender - injected with chocolate and cooked rare sous-vide. It's served with one of the cook's mother's red cabbage recipe, parsnip and pistachio puree, and crushed cocao nibs.

Fortuneless cookie: the mint flavoured fortune is eaten first, followed by slightly tart, malic acid dusted housemade fortune cookie, and finished with a refreshing cilantro water shot.

Flapjacks, prepared tableside: Ben Roche, the pastry chef, made my flapjacks himself. This is normally done tableside by your server - all of whom are also cooks at moto - on a liquid nitrogen super-cooled griddle. The flapjack puree is poured on, flipped, and then served on a spoonful of the most delicious maple syrup you have never heard of. It's exquisitely bottled like a small batch bourbon, with a hand-lettered label, and more of a nectar - by BliS in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Cucumber & watermelon: this was one of my mini watermelons. The rind is a cucumber gelatin formed while it thaws in a calcium chloride solution - but the watermelon juice inside remains completely liquid. In their normal version, black sesame seeds emulate tiny watermelon seeds, but I was having some novice problems coating them correctly, so Omar told me to leave them out to help their structural integrity.

Fettucine with white alba truffles: I have to admit that I was concerned about having a pasta dish this late in the meal, but this was one of my favourite dishes of the night. Delicately sweet housemade fettucine in a light cream sauce, with lemon curd, mint pesto, milk chocolate ice cream truffles, and shavings of fresh white Alba truffles.

Freeze dried pina colada - lemon gelatin over freeze dried coconut and pineapple shavings.

Doughnut soup - a warm doughnut soup made with real glazed doughnuts and a doughnut stock of about one dozen glazed doughnuts to a gallon of milk.

Delicata squash & rice pudding: my squash, sauteed soft in butter, served with a rice pudding gelatin, coconut ice cream, a coconut cake crouton, and cranberry powder.

I also had a taste of the quail and one liquid-fruit-centered, hard-chocolate-shell truffle - served separately. But even with the gtm, I amazingly did not have all of the courses available. Especially intriguing was a melted Porter Cheddar, root beer & fried beer.

Also not pictured is another item that I did in fact taste - the whimsical Refund course. What's that? I'm not telling.

I do hope you will discover some surprises and truths yourself.

moto
945 West Fulton Market
Chicago, Illinois 60647
312-491-0058

Comments

[daniel]

seems like a good reason to visit chicago :-) im afraid to find out how much this would cost

[susan]

Louisa, this sounds great - innovative, exciting and delicious. Lucky you.

[Lil]

wow, definitely looking great and very exciting meals ahead! (and you don't want to know what someone told me recently his opinion of what sweetbreads are....)

[Michelangelo]

That is the best and most enticing coverage of moto I have ever seen. Congratulations.

[Louisa]

Daniel - lots of good reasons to visit Chicago. And anyone who can afford TiVo needn't worry about asking the price of dinner. ;) A proper gtm - seated in the dining room - is $160. A stage may be yours for the asking.

Susan - amazingly delicious. So when are you coming to do a story about the new Chicago school of chefs? :)

Lil - yes, even more exciting meals ahead. But yes, now I want to know what your friend said about sweetbreads! Feel free to email me if you think it's really too disgusting. ;)

Michelangelo - thanks so much - and the praise goes to moto.

[McAuliflower]

What an upbeat assortment. I'm really digging the donut stock. thanks for letting us peak over your shoulder on this!

[H. Alexander Talbot]

Per your request-
Louisa,

If you enjoyed the whiskey barrel aged maple syrup you should search out
some of the other incredible products from produced by Steve Stallard such
as wild char roe; which coincidentally is recently featured on our website.(www.ideasinfood.com)

Best,
H. Alexander Talbot

[Oliver]

Hi Louisa, Another good reason for N. and I to pay Chicago a visit. Next to Seattle it has been on our top 3 list of US cities to visit next (have seen quite a bit of the East & West). What an exciting and delicious experience - and very nicely captured!

[chris edwards]

awesome. period. i was just telling some friends how even though cooking like that might be different that it stil is cooking. and even before the science comes into play that you have to create pure flavors which is cooking at its highest form. from my experience every chef's main goal is to deliver the individual purity of each ingredient. it appears that motos food accomplishes that goal.. but i'd visit chitown to hang out with you drinking bubble tea eating jelly fish anytime, without going to moto or alinea.

[Silly Disciple]

Louisa, I'm not sure I understood the setup of the foaming station. Can you tell me more?

thanks,

sd

[Nopisto]

This year at El Bulli they had a corn soup with pop-corn souflé that looks very similar to the dish mentioned avobe. I didn't liked it much but it seems to be very popular among americans.

[nate]

Yikes -- a little color correction would help those photos out. The blue-green cast doesn't exactly do the dishes justice.

[inventolux]

This is a pretty cool website and I am honored to be a part of it. Thank you all for supporting our postmodern movement and let me know if there is anything I can do to further the movable-feast. HC

[lee]

I used to be the delivery driver for Homegrown WI, the small coop of organic farmers who deliver produce to Chicago restaurants. Sadly, it was before they started delivering to Moto. I'm going to track down the grower of that delicata squash so they can see your pictures of the final product. I just hope it isn't the Amish growers! Thanks.

[ted niceley]

Awesome report, Louisa, and wonderful photos!!!
Eating at the pass...doesn't get much better then that..
cheers,
Ted

[Bux]

Fascinating stuff. I'm always rewarded when I take the time to come here as I usually find good subject matter and great delivery. It's an exciting time to be cooking and writing about food, not to mention eating.

It's interesting how misunderstood sweetbread are, and I have to add to the confusion. Most English language references tell you that they are the thymus gland and sometimes the pancreas. The thymus gland disappears as the animal matures, thus you have veal sweetbreads and not beef sweetbreads, unless it's the pancreas and I'm not sure of that. I've had sweetbreads in Spain from suckling lambs, so it's not just veal, except that in the US, I don't think they kill lambs young enough to get sweetbreads

Doing research for my recent trip to Italy, I found "animelles" translated as sweetbreads. I was sure they were "Rocky Mountain Oysters" which I don't recall ever having. Apparently the same word is used for sweetbreads and testicles (in the kitchen) in Italy and apparently they are similar in texture and taste. I learned this only after ordering "animelles" in Italy and now I still don't know if I've had "Rocky Mountain Oysters."

[Louisa]

McAuliflower - that's so funny - the cook who did the donut soup said that diners who are into cooking loved hearing about the donut stock!

H. Alexander Talbot/Alex - awe-inspiring chef/blogger at www.ideasinfood.com - thanks so much for posting that. Yes, we can find that amazing maple syrup - and the transcendent roe - at bliscaviar.com - which features testimonials from you and Grant Achatz! Thanks so much again.

Olivier - what's the third city? And I wait with bated breath your visit to Chicago - I cannot imagine how beautifully you and Nicky would capture the city for Delicious Days.

Chris - anytime. :)

Silly Disciple - I'm striking myself in the head - I forgot to take a picture! They clamped an immersion blender to the side of a pot - and then the whole thing to a floor to ceiling pipe to keep it fixed in place and stable. Better?

Nopisto - but I'm guessing no huitlacoche! And I'd be very interested about the opinions of Central Americans in particular. Any Mexicans in the kitchen this year?

Nate - I know. My laptop's maxed out - takes way too long to do anything.

inventolux - for those of you who may not know this is our man of honour himself - Chef Homaru Cantu. It was my pleasure and honour - thank you so much again.

Lee - oh no! Do the Amish growers not want even their produce photographed?? Home Grown Wisconsin can be found at www.homegrownwisconsin.com - thanks for letting us know.

Ted - I have to admit that eating at the pass during service goes against all of my French old-school training - but hot-damn it was fun!

Bux - yes, you've added to the confusion! ;) I just assured some people that they're not brains - now they think they're testicles! ;) But as I like to tell people, if they've eaten hot dogs, they've eaten literally everything. :)

[lee]

I bet they don't mind their produce getting photographed but I'm thinking they don't spend much time on the internet. Hee hee. Lee

[joone]

wow! that was well documented, and it sounded really amazing, if i'm in chicago, it'll be on my list of to-eats!

[Jay]

*drools at the feast*

Louisa - all of them seem too good to eat! The doughnut soup sounds very interesting though.

[Louisa]

Lee - probably a good thing - otherwise they'd waste countless hours at amishgullet.com too. ;)

joone - you have to, you really have to.

Jay - LOL! All but the doughnut soup sounds too good to eat?? But as our hero Homer says, "Mmm...doughnuts..." - or is that donuts? :)

[Jennifer]

Flapjacks cooked tableside with a bottle of nectar-like maple syrup? Sounds amazing. The only thing that intimidates me about this meal is the sheer amount of sensory input. I fear that I might get overloaded... but still. It would be worth the risk!

[greg from the cia]

thank you for letting us join you on the journey that is moto, it looks fascinating!!!

[docsconz]

Louisa,

You continuously have one of the very best blogs out there. Your Moto write-up brought back some nice memories of my visit there last May. It's sad in a way that the Maki will be retired. It is a beautiful and fun dish. I like Chef cantu's use of "postmodern", too. I am looking forward to more Chicago entries.

[Louisa]

Jennifer - life is not worth living without some risks. ;)

Greg - you're so welcome. And again, I thank Omar and his team at Moto.

docsconz - so good to see you here! I know what you mean about the Maki but I only look forward to its successors. And yes, more Chicago posts to come.