Moto: Introduction
As our taxi turned a corner onto a dimly lit street, not exactly the place I would expect to find a fancy restaurant, I was wondering where we were. I looked around and saw a bunch of industrial looking buildings and some loading docks with trucks backed up to them. The street was all dark and looked to be empty. We turned another corner, and I saw a white folding sign next to the two foot high curb saying "MOTO valet." We pulled up to a stop and stepped out into the crisp freezing Chicago air. It looked to be an interesting place for a restaurant, the Chicago "meat packing district." Looking around, confused, I stepped up onto the sidewalk and saw a door with the word MOTO printed on it. Assuming this was the right place, I walked in, relieved to be able to fully thaw.
My mom and I were in Chicago, visiting my cousins, and I had heard about this interesting restaurant called Moto on the radio two years earlier. From the description on NPR, all I knew about the restaurant was that it is centered around doing cool science stuff with food. It was crazy food but really good food. I heard that they cooked food with liquid nitrogen, and printed your personalized menus on edible paper with edible inks. I had wanted to go the moment I heard the radio story in the car, and that weekend seemed like the perfect time.
When we entered, a man in a neatly tailored black suit opened the door for us. As we walked inside, I looked around. Above the hostess desk, on an earthy green wall, there is a mirror, cut to be in the shape of a fancy chandelier. Further along that wall, there is a long, narrow, empty wooden bar with stools. Across the narrow front room from the end of the bar, there are some small tables. After we offered our coats for coat check, we walked into the main dining room.
Entering the main dining room, there is a sideboard in the middle of the wide entranceway, creating two aisles down the length of the room. The décor of the main dining room is simple, with clean lines and subtle colors – not what I expected from a restaurant serving science (or even science fiction) food. The wall on the right has a banquette all the way down it, and above the banquette, there is a cutout in the wall, lined with simple votive candles. The opposite wall seems to just be a wall of glowing light behind a semi-opaque curtain. There is a row of tables on either side of the room and one down the middle. We were seated in the middle row of tables, at a table for four with my uncle and cousin who had arrived a few minutes earlier.
We sat down and immediately were presented with paper copies of the menu, and I almost laughed when we were told that the edible copies of our menus were being baked. We decided to get the fixed ten course tasting menu; there are also fixed five and eighteen course menus as well. Shortly thereafter, our menus arrived. They were arranged on the right hand side of narrow rectangular plates, set vertically in front of us. To the left of the menus, at the top of the plate, there was a bit of champagne jello. At the bottom, there was a pear sautéed in vanilla and butter. The menu itself was almost identical to the paper one, but smaller, and personalized. At the bottom, it said, “moto is pleased to welcome the Isis party”. The menu was printed on a thin sheet of pastry, cooked with some butter, and salt and pepper. After we had admired our menus, we dug in. it was surprisingly delicious, extremely thin and crisp, but warm and buttery at the same time. After finishing my menu, I had the feeling I would be getting a lot more surprises that evening.
Here is the ten course menu we ordered:
GREEK salad
GREEK salad, again
CARIBBEAN escolar
BBQ PORK & baked beans
PASTA & quail
PRIME with potato
FRUIT & bubbles
TRUFFLE & white chocolate
PERSIMMON & cream
S’MORES
[This essay is the first in a series on Isis' experiences at Moto.]
March 24, 2008
Isis (not her real name) is sixteen years old and is really interested in food
because her dad is a good cook. She was practically raised in a Vietnamese
restaurant, and as a baby ate her first solid foods there, which were rice
noodles. She tries most foods that are offered to her and her parents urge her
to also. For example, when she was 7 years old, she was at a French restaurant
and her parents were having snails and they easily talked her into trying them.
They ended up being pretty good!
Isis takes ballet, plays soccer, sings in a choir, and loves to travel. She thinks that if you are going to eat, why not eat well if you can? There seems to be no reason not to.
Email questions or comments for these two young women to webmaster@drgourmet.com.