MOTO, Chicago (2/2)

Cantu practices his own brand of alchemy: vacuum-cooked everything, edible menus fashioned from potato starch paper, sublime Pacific bass cooked tableside on a polymer box that he invented and patented. Cantu is at his best when he riffs on the American vernacular—his barbecued capon, for instance, is a trompe l'oeil featuring two preparations of the smoky bird topped with tiny scoops of weirdly wonderful "Kentucky-fried ice cream" (infused with Cantu's take on the colonel's secret herbs and spices, of course). It's hard to know what to make of the strange corkscrew cutlery handles stuffed with shaggy aromatic herbs, another madcap Cantu creation, or the glass of sweet sesame-milk soda that comes with an otherwise flawless sashimi. Patrons stare in disbelief as they are instructed in how to handle his offbeat creations with even more peculiar utensils: The whole time thinking that they are inside a three-star science lab. It's a bizarre combination of calculated whimsy and somberness from the waitstaff in the minimalist dining room, even as they intone, "The idea is to play with your food." Oddities like prosciutto cotton candy with pear soup and Kalamata olive ice shavings are delicious, because behind all the gimmickry is an imitable chef who is a whiz at matching flavors in often revelatory combinations. Try the sashimi with kumquat-soy soda. Ditto the quail, with a mini syringe used to squeeze tastes of sherry, liquefied chard, and porcini into your mouth between bites. Chef Cantu has even introduced an edible menu - don't eat it before you read it! Eager patrons are enticed by other novelty offerings such as rice balls injected with a suspiciously crimson sauce, spiral-handled flatware encasing a sprig of fresh thyme, or even the live Japanese river crab cooked before their eyes in a Cantu-patented polymer box. He loves to play with the syringe: a typical meal at Moto may include Crab chowder consists of a tiny but soft-shell crab perched atop a lump of chilled crabmeat and black caviar. On the side, four plastic syringes are stacked between slender silver barbell magnets. Each syringe is filled with a tasty soup: Peruvian potato, cream, carrot, garlic leek. Squeezed one into your mouth, crunch into the crab and move on to the next. This is but a single dish of the 5, 7, 10, and 19 course tasting menus, which range in price from $50 to $160 a person. By the way, with an ever-changing menu, by the time you're reading this, these dishes will be oh-so-last-week. "Creations are rotated out every week," says Cantu. "We have to stay on top of this, we can never let up and that's the challenge. The staff meets every night to discuss new ideas, with the only rule being don't give me something that's been done before because that's a waste of everyone's time." Sources: http://www.motorestaurant.com/ (Photos by Orlik Photo ) http://www.gayot.com/restaurants/restaurantissue/cuisineextreme.html http://metromix.chicagotribune.com/search/mmx-040321-moto,1,67524.story Time Magazine May 24, 2004, by Kristin Kloberdanz Travel and Leisure, December 2004, by Anya Vong Bremzen