Homaro Cantu Inventions Information

Homaro "Omar" Cantu Jr. (September 23, 1976 – April 14, 2015) was an American chef and inventor known for his use of molecular gastronomy. As a child, Cantu was fascinated with science and engineering. While working in a fast food restaurant, he discovered the similarities between science and cooking and decided to become a chef. In 1999, he was hired by his idol, Chicago chef Charlie Trotter. In 2003, Cantu became the first chef of Moto, which he later purchased.

Through Moto, Cantu explored his unusual ideas about cooking including edible menus, carbonated fruit, and food cooked with a laser. Initially seen as a novelty only, Moto eventually earned critical praise and, in 2012, a Michelin star. Cantu's second restaurant, iNG, and his coffee house, Berrista, focused on the use of "miracle berries" to make sour food taste sweet. He was working on opening a brewery called Crooked Fork at the time of his suicide in 2015.

In addition to being a chef, Cantu was a media personality, appearing regularly on TV shows, and an inventor. In 2010, he produced and co-hosted a show called Future Food. Through his media appearances, he advocated for an end to world hunger and thought his edible paper creation and the miracle berry could play a significant role in that goal. Cantu volunteered his time and money to a variety of charities and patented several food gadgets.

Cantu was born in Tacoma, Washington, on September 23, 1976. His father was a fabrication engineer and Cantu developed a passion for science and engineering at a young age. He disassembled the family lawn mower three times to learn how it worked, and his "Christmas gifts would wind up in a million pieces."

A self-described problem child, Cantu grew up in Portland, Oregon. From the age of six to nine, he was homeless with his mother Laurie Cantu and sister Angela Cantu. He would later credit the homelessness for his inspiration to make food and become a social entrepreneur. At the age of twelve, Cantu was nearly jailed for starting a large fire near his apartment. That same year, he took his first job, working in fried-food fast food restaurant (he lied on the application and said he was 16) to earn money to buy gadgets such as remote-controlled airplanes. When the owner bought a tandoori oven, Cantu's life was changed; he saw that cooking was similar to working in a science lab. "It is chemistry and physics and biology all wrapped into one," Cantu later remarked as an adult. "What other field can I experiment on something different every single day?"

After high school, Cantu found himself without a home. He connected with Bill and Jan Miller, a couple who took in troubled teens. They gave him a couch to sleep on under the condition that Cantu attend culinary school.

Cantu graduated from the Western Culinary Institute (now a Le Cordon Bleu School) and spent the next two years staging on the West Coast. After about 50 such two-week to one-month internships, he was ready for a paid job. One day in February 1999, he decided to try to get a job with his idol, Charlie Trotter. "I made it my life's goal to become a sous chef for Charlie Trotter," Cantu remarked. "I literally just flew out [to Chicago] one day with $300 in my pocket and no place to stay". Cantu had no real plan to get employed – he simply showed up at Trotter's back door and begged him for a job. Trotter agreed to an interview the following day, and was impressed enough to give Cantu a job. Cantu worked his way up the ranks, becoming one of Trotter's sous chefs. On his days off, he began to explore new ways to prepare and present food.

In 2003, Cantu learned of a chef opening at a soon-to-open restaurant called Moto. The restaurant's backer, Joseph De Vito, was looking to do something a bit out of the ordinary, perhaps Asian fusion. When Cantu interviewed for the position, he pitched something really different. "This guy comes in with these little glasses, he looks like an accountant," De Vito recalled, "and started talking about levitating food. I walked away saying, 'Wow, that's a lot to take in.'" Cantu persuaded De Vito to let him cook a meal for De Vito and his wife. The seven-course meal, which featured an exploding ravioli and a small table-top box that cooked fish before the guest's eyes, won De Vito over.

When Moto opened in January 2004, guests were confused. People would come in looking for sushi and leave when offered a degustation menu instead, De Vito recalled. Enough people braved the menu, however, and soon the restaurant was discovered by foodies. Cantu quickly earned a reputation for shocking guests. For example, one feature was synthetic wine squirted into the glass with a medical syringe. Other innovations included edible menus and carbonated fruit.

Describing himself as a scientist at heart, Cantu emphasized unusual cooking devices and experimentation in his food. He would keep a tape recorder by his bedside to capture middle-of-the-night random thoughts to turn into new inventions. His kitchen included a centrifuge, a hand-held ion particle gun, and class IV lasers, among other science gadgets. His menus too showed off his zany ideas, with descriptions such as "surf and turf with mc escher" and "after christmas sale on christmas trees." At weekly brainstorming sessions, Moto chefs were prompted to come up with new takes on ordinary food by discussing how they could change foods they ate that week. Prototypes were created, and failure was encouraged. Within two years, Moto's crazy dishes had attracted the attention of The New York Times and Gourmet magazine, and Cantu had been asked to cook for Nobel Prize winners and molecular gastronomy pioneer Ferran Adrià.

Cantu's edible paper – a corn flow and soy concoction, similar to material used on birthday cakes – in particular attracted a lot of attention. In 2005, The New York Times ran a story on the paper.Burger King sent a group of executives to Moto to explore Cantu's edible paper invention and other ideas. Featured heavily in early Moto menus, the paper was fed through a Canon i560 inkjet printer filled with inks made out of food. It was then brushed with powdered seasonings to give it whatever taste Cantu wished to convey. In 2005, Cantu began experimenting with liquid nitrogen to flash freeze food and to give dishes unusual shapes and with helium and superconductors in an attempt to levitate them. A profile by Gourmet talked a "floating course" with a specially made silicone cube that became lighter than air when heated and was imbued with smoke to give it a varying aroma. Cantu purchased a class IV laser (the highest grade available) to cook the interior of fish while leaving the outside raw and to create "inside out bread" with a doughy exterior and crusty interior.

Initially, food critics were not impressed saying Moto sacrificed deliciousness in favor of cleverness. Other chefs were split, variously describing Cantu as a "faddish flavor of the month" or a "creative genius." Over time, guests and critics began to notice the quality of the food in addition to the odd presentation. A 2005 review by The New York Times Magazine declared

Fellow molecular gastronomy chef Grant Achatz described Cantu as "an ambassador of creative food." Together with Achatz and Graham Elliot, Cantu helped earn Chicago a reputation as the center of the innovative food. Cantu took over ownership of Moto and earned the restaurant a Michelin star in 2012, which it retained until his death.

Cantu's second restaurant, iNG, was a "reboot" of an earlier idea for a restaurant opened by original Moto owner Joseph Devito, which he named Otom to capitalize on Cantu's popular Moto concept. It was focused around a concept he called "flavor-tripping" – the use of the "miracle berry" to make sour foods taste sweet. The restaurant lost money and was closed in the Spring of 2014. After iNG closed, Cantu opened a coffee house called Berrista focused around the same concept. At the time of his death, he was preparing to open a brewery/brewpub called Crooked Fork with his friend and former Moto manager Trevor Rose-Hamblin. In September 2016, Rose-Hamblin and another of Cantu's associates, Matthias Merges, opened the brewpub, now renamed Old Irving Brewing Company.

In addition to cooking, Cantu had a passion for inventing. He filed more than 100 patent applications, and signed deals with NASA and Whirlpool for use of his inventions. A 2006 Food and Wine article by Pete Wells declared that if he could put one dish in a time capsule to explain the food trends of the past year, it would be Cantu's cotton candy paper, not because of its taste, but rather because of the copyright notice on the paper. He explained: "If chefs in the future call their lawyers every time they change their menus, we'll be able to look back on this two-dimensional treat and say, 'This is where it all began.'"

Cantu created a business called Cantu Designs to license his food-related inventions. Inventions included new utensils, a polymer cooking box that allows food to continue cooking after it is removed from the heat source, and an edible printer he called the "food replicator" in homage to Star Trek. Cantu had weekly meetings with a Chicago design firm called DeepLabs. There, he brainstormed with engineers and design people on new food presentation and gadget ideas. With DeepLabs, Cantu marketed inventions such as a fork and corkscrew combination and a utensil-sized device that turned into a plate at the push of a button. Other collaborations included an fork-spoon-knife combination utensil, utensils that released aromatic vapors on the push of a button, and a prototype utensil with a built in heating device. Cantu's patent lawyer, Chuck Valauskas, said the chef had so many ideas that his primary duty was to filter the more impractical ones out. Cantu also converted Moto's office into a "state-of-the-art indoor farm to grow vegetables – complete with a vortex aerator".

In 2007, Cantu appeared on Iron Chef America, defeating Masaharu Morimoto. In the episode, Cantu used a laser to caramelize edible packaging material, and liquid nitrogen to create beet (which was the secret ingredient) "balloons," among other innovations. He returned to the show in 2013, again facing off with Morimoto, this time in a battle of herring. He lost the rematch.

Also in 2007, Cantu was featured in the documentary series Unwrapped and on Dinner: Impossible. He appeared on Good Morning America and twice on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. He was featured on Roadtrip Nation in season six and was twice a guest judge on Hell's Kitchen. Cantu was also featured in the At the Table with ... documentary series and the British science documentary series Horizon. He appeared on the November 27, 2011, episode of CNN's The Next List.

In 2010, Cantu produced and co-hosted a TV show called Future Food on Discovery's Planet Green.

Following his death in 2015, Director/Producer Brett A. Schwartz of StoryScreen directed and produced a feature-length documentary film called Insatiable: The Homaro Cantu Story (2016). Insatiable had its world premiere at SXSW (South By Southwest Film Festival) in March 2016. According to Pamela Powell of The Chicago Independent Film Critics Circle, "'Insatiable: The Homaro Cantu Story" is a delectable delivery of innovation and inspiration ... Gorgeously shot with thought-provoking interviews, 'Insatiable' will whet your appetite for food and knowledge. It's a story that will satisfy your hunger for greater things and it just might motivate the next genius to help our world." Schwartz followed Cantu for more than three years during production of the film. Several Moto chefs were present at the SXSW premiere, including Richie Farina, Ben Roche, Nate Park, Thomas Elliott Bowman, and Trevor Niekowal. Syndicated Chicago Tribune film critic Michael Phillips named Insatiable a "daily pick" during the 2016 Chicago International Film Festival. The film is distributed by Virgil Films and Entertainment and is widely available on DVD, streaming, and Digital HD.

Complete article available at this page.