Non-Food Nonsense

http://www.jewishworldreview.com | Sometimes I miss regular food, the kind many of us ate when we were kids. Now, because of health concerns, economics, and fashion, there are all kinds of things on our plates that a few decades ago wouldn't have even qualified as food. Some people have non-eggs with a side order of non-bacon, and then put non-sugar in their decaf to finish off their non-breakfast. After dinner, they'll have non-ice cream with non-chocolate sauce. Now one restaurant — Moto, in Chicago — has taken non-food foods to a new level. They serve edible paper.

Using a computer printer, Homaro Cantu, the head chef at the place, prints images of food on paper made of soybeans and cornstarch. The inks he uses are flavored. The paper pictures of sushi that he prints out on his inkjet actually taste like sushi, and the pictures of chicken really taste like chicken. The menu is edible, too. It's an amazing technological triumph. But wait a minute. Real sushi also tastes like sushi, and real chicken tastes like chicken, so why bother?

The answer, of course, is that it's new, it's experimental, and it's trendy. And a dinner including paper courses at Moto can run $240 a person. That's a tough check to swallow, no matter what it's made of. Cantu wants to infuse the dining-out experience with fun. He feels people are tired of just ordering conventional food, being served it, and going home. I'm not. That's what I like about going to a restaurant: you order food you like, you eat it, and you go home. This chef dreams of cooking with lasers and is currently experimenting with helium to make foods levitate. I dream of going to a restaurant where all the foods on my plate at least look vaguely familiar to me.

These days, when you go to a trendy restaurant, that dish that you always enjoyed when it was just cooked normally is either served blackened or raw. Vegetables that they now refer to as "baby greens" used to be called weeds. And I don't want to try the "pizza of the day" — the one with pineapple and peanut butter. I just want one with cheese and tomato sauce.

But obviously, not everybody is a fuddy-duddy like me. There are people who suddenly decide to try a new brand of jeans instead of buying the ones they've been comfortable in for twenty years. There are some adventurous souls who, just to see what it's like, decide to try to sleep on the other side of the bed one night. I guess these are the people who get excited about trying "different" or "interesting" food.

They're tired of eating burgers that they've loved all their life, so they eat an ostrich burger. They don't want the same old delicious fish that they've enjoyed in the past, so they'll have some eel. And they try weird and exotic foods that, for some strange reason, we're always told "taste just like chicken." Chef Cantu is banking on these people eventually even getting bored with exotic foods and turning to munching on his paper goods.

But after a while, his paper concoctions are going to seem mundane to those always chasing the latest trend. Serving edible pictures of normal foods won't be unusual enough. He'll have to rev up his Canon i560 and start serving paper versions of stranger and stranger foods. With all his enthusiasm for technology and innovation, he'll probably pull it off. In a few years, I can imagine a customer there asking the waiter, "What does the rattlesnake taste like?" And then the waiter will answer, "It's good. It tastes just like a picture of chicken."

Enjoy this writer's work? Why not sign-up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Lloyd Garver has written for many television shows, ranging from "Sesame Street" to "Family Ties" to "Frasier." He has also read many books, some of them in hardcover. Comment by clicking here. Visit his website by clicking here.

01/27/05: Who Deserves An Asterisk?
12/30/04: Read 2005's Headlines Now
12/16/04: I'm ready to be sentenced
12/10/04: Drug testing, baseball & politics
12/02/04: Presidents Do It; Why Not You?
11/18/04: And A Digital New Year To All
11/11/04: In praise of solitude
09/15/04: Resting Up For The Next Olympics
09/02/04: Drop the smirk, part the hair
08/26/04: The Indefinitive Election Poll
08/19/04: Postage stamps get personal
08/12/04: The Political Olympics
08/05/04: Candidates are relying too much on research and taking some voters for granted
07/26/04: Color Code Confusion
07/08/04: Two Johns, no waiting
07/01/04: College Kids: They're Ba'aaack
06/11/04: A real sucker
06/03/04: What America really thinks
05/28/04: Fly the nice skies
05/20/04: A margin of error
05/06/04: TIPtoeing Around New York
04/29/04: The trouble with tall people
04/22/04: It's over for the Yankees
04/15/04: Silver bullets, tarnished excuses
04/08/04: A basketball fan's Nirvana
04/01/04: Something you're dying to write
03/25/04: Trumping Trump
03/11/04: Spelling still kounts
02/10/04: Leave the Amish alone
02/05/04: 'The State Of The Column' Column
01/15/04 Being Fat And Fit?
01/12/04 How to win the lottery
01/05/04 Sign Of The Times
12/27/03 Your Checklist Of Football Cliches
12/19/03 Clean getaway for holiday shoppers
12/15/03 The Cadillac Of Columns?
12/08/03 Dearest (Insert Name Here) ...
12/01/03 If they advertise it, we will buy
11/21/03 Feeling young, small and intimidated
11/14/03 The ulterior motive behind changes in those airline passenger meals
10/30/03 Real Money From Virtual Reality
10/23/03 Seeing red on new greenbacks
10/10/03 A sorry state of affairs
10/02/03 Revealed! Celeb-authored kids' books arriving just in time for the holidays
09/25/03 Just say 'yes' to dinner
09/11/03 In search of cool
09/04/03 Taking 'Intelligence' Out Of 'CIA'
08/28/03 Relaxation makes me nervous
07/31/03: What empty nest?
07/17/03: America's Big Hang-Up
06/27/03: Mental gymnastics
06/19/03: Why do we lie to our doctors?
06/02/03: Driving around in circles
05/28/03: These writers don't monkey around
05/19/03: Testing the water
05/13/03: New car hell
05/05/03: Bed and breakfast bewilderment
04/28/03: Sexy? That's a laugh!
04/10/03: When 'all A's' isn't good enough
04/04/03: A kibosh on complaining
03/13/03: Cut those billionaires some slack
03/05/03: Will they ever run out of celebs? The pols hope not!
02/26/03: Unfortunately, we can hear you now
02/19/03: Just say what you mean