Finally I had my long awaited day as a guest chef at Moto (my anniversary gift from Cindy, bought at the Threshold's silent auction at their annual golf & tennis outing [i was on call that evening] http://www.motorestaurant.com/flash/index.html.
I arrived at the restaurant around 1 PM. It is located a few blocks west of the Kennedy expressway just north of Lake St in an area that can’t decide if should have chic restaurants and galleries, or if it is post-industrial wholesale food market. I was supposed to come through the back door, but the entrance was a blank face, and the doorbell was broken, so I had to call them on the phone. One of the chefs, Chris, came to let me in. Immediately afterwards I had to move my car. There aren’t really any “No Parking” signs, but I was told that the general rule was that your car was only safe from ticketing/towing if you were parked on a part of the street that had a curb. On my second arrival I was given a double breasted chef’s top with checkerboard pantsa green apron, and a strip of toweling.
My uniform (sans hat, all of the chefs had cropped hair or wore bandanas).
The chefs seemed this young to me!
I also had to sign a four page non-disclosure agreement, so I don’t know how much I am allowed to tell you about what I saw in the restaurant! I got a tour of the restaurant – it is pretty small, with a total capacity of about ninety. Then I went into the kitchen. Moto does not have any walk in cold storage (really the restaurant is too small for that), so it has to buy food pretty much every day or two to keep up with demand. It has three large refrigeration units, one for meat, another vegetables, and a third for dairy. The whole kitchen is maybe a 40 x 20 foot space, and at least 7 people working in this space: a dishwasher, three pastry chefs, a meat station, a fish station, and (I think) three or four other chefs doing other more general prep work. The kitchen was really busy, and a lot like an operating room, with everyone having their assigned tasks to do as they saw best, and moving in a sort of ballet with the other workers. There was only a narrow corridor between me and the wall, so people were constantly saying “behind you” as they squeezed past me, often as they carried heavy trays of really hot food.
I was assigned a small corner and given the task of preparing sea beans.
Sea Beanshttp://www.westcoastseaweed.com/seabean/nscp_toc/index.html I picked up a stalk of vegetable about six inches long and determined if it was green enough, or if it had ugly brown spots. I would then break the good parts into one to one-half inch bits. The lower part of the stem is a bit woody and bitter, so had to be tossed. Apparently we are nearing the end of the sea bean season, and a lot of the stalks were ‘unfit’ to eat. I think it took me about an hour to select about a double handful of good pieces - - it didn’t help that occasionally Chris would come by to shake the ‘save’ container, and then eat a few of them! I was just around the corner from the hot line, where there are several ovens and gas grills constantly running, so I was nearest the fish and meat stations.
Moto is an unusual place, because there is no wait staff. Generally, people start working there as externs from cooking schools like the Culinary Institute of America. If they do a good job, they are invited back to work in the restaurant in a paid position. They start out as runners. In this position you take the food from the kitchen (it is in the basement) and run it upstairs to the main dining room. From there you advance to helping out the other chefs in prep work. Next you graduate to the fish station, then meat station, and then to other areas. After rotating through these parts of the kitchen you are given a job as a ‘suit’, and work the upstairs as a waiter, server, etc. Most people work at Moto for 12-18 months before moving on to other restaurants or leaving the food industry entirely, but a couple of the chefs had been there for 3-4 years.
While I was prepping the sea beans I was watching some of the action going on around me. The fish station chef was coring apple halves, roasting them, and then coating them with a caramel sauce flavored with sage. I couldn’t really see what the meat station chef was doing. Across from me another chef was making popcorn balls. This is a slurry of ground up popcorn, butter flavor and simple syrup. It’s frozen with liquid nitrogen, and enrobed with white chocolate and nuts. The inside melts so that when you bite down on the outside the popcorn slurry bursts into your mouth. I was talking to the Fish station chef (I already can’t remember his name - - the kitchen had loud rock music playing all the time, plus all the kitchen noise). He told me that the restaurant is closed on Sundays and Mondays, and that he had slow-cooked some pork the night before, and on Sunday he, his wife, and another couple were going to ski at Chestnut Mountain https://www.chestnutmtn.com/index.cfm in western Illinois, where you ski down the river bluffs, and then take a chair lift back up to the lodge. Meanwhile he was cutting a lot of vegetables – onions, tomatoes, carrots, peppers. I found out that this was for today’s 3 PM lunch. Usually this is cooked by the meat station chef, but he was helping out today (for lunch we had tortillas with your choice of rib meat or steak, spicy rice, a salad of pineapple, jalepenoes, cream and cranberry powder, and an ice cream cake made with coconut and pineapple.) He told me that on Tuesdays the whole restaurant staff gets together in the morning and talk about the food they had over the weekend and any ideas for new dishes. I think the menu at Moto changes every couple of months. Also, the head chef, Homaro Cantu, walked past and introduced himself. I have to say that I flubbed the introduction, because I couldn’t hear him very well - - I didn’t really know who he was, and he looks really young!
One notable thing about Moto is their frequent and abundant use of liquid nitrogen. They must go through at least a man-sized tank each weak, at least 500 liters. They make ice cream in about 5 minutes by using a KitchenAid mixer, ice cream base with flavors, and a lot of N2! Sometimes they are trying to freeze two different substances at once which have different freezing points, so they alternate using liquid N2 and a blowtorch. Across the bench one of the pastry chefs (the only female) was making a dessert called a gin-and-tonic. This is a frozen cake of gin-and-tonic which is put into some kind of alginate solution http://www.fmcbiopolymer.com/Ingredients/AlginatesPGA/Introduction/tabid/2408/Default.aspx which forms a skin around the cold tablet. She scoops up the gel (it looks like a giant frog egg) and puts it in alternating warm and cold baths. Meanwhile, the head pastry chef (Ben Roche) was freezing grapefruit halves with liquid nitrogen, putting them in a metal container, and then shaking them really hard. This makes all of the pulpy bits of the fruit separate out, and these are plated out as little grapefruit ‘seeds’. I also saw them making ‘s’mores’ with a liquid N2 slurry of graham crackers and cream enrobed in dark chocolate
As I finished with the sea beans, so I was given another task, preparing octopus. These were Tahitian octopi that had been previously gutted – their heads, beaks, and stomachs were removed. They had already been marinated and roasted. My 'difficult' task was to cut each octopus into eight segments. I completed this task pretty quickly, which seemed to surprise them a bit, and they really didn’t have any other work for me to do. However, it was just about time for lunch anyway. I ate upstairs with the ‘wait staff’ near the bar. The bartender had also worked through the kitchen and was now trying to figure out a drink that tasted like fruit loops - - suggested by a customer. I had previously watched him make carrot juice, beat on lemon grass, and make a syrup of lemon grass and ginger chunks. He allowed me to sample from their ‘martini library’: four different styles of martini in plastic pipette bulbs – classic with a drop of blue curacao, an appletini, a negroni, and a lemon drop.
After lunch I went back downstairs where I saw the chefs preparing something with flash fried rice paper and tofu skin, which I was told would later be flavored with powders or sauces. At 4:00 the whole staff gets together in the kitchen and all of the different parties are discussed – food allergies, etc. I misheard ‘pescatarian’ as ‘Presbyterian’, and I couldn’t figure out why Presbyterians would have any special food requests! The chefs started to work on preparing the restaurant for service, cleaning everything up, getting plates out, etc., and at 5:00 they kicked me out.
I drove back home, and missed seeing Nicola in all of her Turnabout Dance finery. Cindy and I got dressed up and then drove back downtown. We arrived at the same time as everyone else - - but since I had been there earlier in the day, Cindy and I didn’t suffer through valet parking - - I knew where some god spots were. We were taken to the downstairs dining room where they seat private parties. I had ordered the five course menu in advance. I would have liked to try the 10 course, but as it was we were at the restaurant until 11:00pm. We started out with some cocktails - - a couple of orders of the martini library, chorizo flavored martinis, and a kir. If you go to the Moto website you can see what was on our menu. Many of us also ordered the paired wine tasting which I do not believe has been updated, as I recall a special, unfiltered, sake. We also got a few extra dishes, I assume because of my time there as a chef.
1) We started with an edible menu printed on rice cracker, with the menu in rebus format (the 5 course was five apple cores, the ten item said 8+2 over a golf green, and the 20 had a picture something got ‘G”, a teapot for T and a picture of Homer Simpson eating a donut for ‘Mmmm’. This was served with some kind of jellied champagne, and a chunk of poached pear on top of a dab of cheese. It was also plated with a dollop of pear puree.
2) Next we had the ‘greek salad’. This was a few pieces of octopus on a drop of pureed parsley and cream. Gail got the sea beans instead. This was plated with flash frozen kalamata olive flavored cracker, and served with a Chablis from South Africa.
While I was prepping the sea beans I was watching some of the action going on around me. The fish station chef was coring apple halves, roasting them, and then coating them with a caramel sauce flavored with sage. I couldn’t really see what the meat station chef was doing. Across from me another chef was making popcorn balls. This is a slurry of ground up popcorn, butter flavor and simple syrup. It’s frozen with liquid nitrogen, and enrobed with white chocolate and nuts. The inside melts so that when you bite down on the outside the popcorn slurry bursts into your mouth. I was talking to the Fish station chef (I already can’t remember his name - - the kitchen had loud rock music playing all the time, plus all the kitchen noise). He told me that the restaurant is closed on Sundays and Mondays, and that he had slow-cooked some pork the night before, and on Sunday he, his wife, and another couple were going to ski at Chestnut Mountain https://www.chestnutmtn.com/index.cfm in western Illinois, where you ski down the river bluffs, and then take a chair lift back up to the lodge. Meanwhile he was cutting a lot of vegetables – onions, tomatoes, carrots, peppers. I found out that this was for today’s 3 PM lunch. Usually this is cooked by the meat station chef, but he was helping out today (for lunch we had tortillas with your choice of rib meat or steak, spicy rice, a salad of pineapple, jalepenoes, cream and cranberry powder, and an ice cream cake made with coconut and pineapple.) He told me that on Tuesdays the whole restaurant staff gets together in the morning and talk about the food they had over the weekend and any ideas for new dishes. I think the menu at Moto changes every couple of months. Also, the head chef, Homaro Cantu, walked past and introduced himself. I have to say that I flubbed the introduction, because I couldn’t hear him very well - - I didn’t really know who he was, and he looks really young!
One notable thing about Moto is their frequent and abundant use of liquid nitrogen. They must go through at least a man-sized tank each weak, at least 500 liters. They make ice cream in about 5 minutes by using a KitchenAid mixer, ice cream base with flavors, and a lot of N2! Sometimes they are trying to freeze two different substances at once which have different freezing points, so they alternate using liquid N2 and a blowtorch. Across the bench one of the pastry chefs (the only female) was making a dessert called a gin-and-tonic. This is a frozen cake of gin-and-tonic which is put into some kind of alginate solution http://www.fmcbiopolymer.com/Ingredients/AlginatesPGA/Introduction/tabid/2408/Default.aspx which forms a skin around the cold tablet. She scoops up the gel (it looks like a giant frog egg) and puts it in alternating warm and cold baths. Meanwhile, the head pastry chef (Ben Roche) was freezing grapefruit halves with liquid nitrogen, putting them in a metal container, and then shaking them really hard. This makes all of the pulpy bits of the fruit separate out, and these are plated out as little grapefruit ‘seeds’. I also saw them making ‘s’mores’ with a liquid N2 slurry of graham crackers and cream enrobed in dark chocolate
As I finished with the sea beans, so I was given another task, preparing octopus. These were Tahitian octopi that had been previously gutted – their heads, beaks, and stomachs were removed. They had already been marinated and roasted. My 'difficult' task was to cut each octopus into eight segments. I completed this task pretty quickly, which seemed to surprise them a bit, and they really didn’t have any other work for me to do. However, it was just about time for lunch anyway. I ate upstairs with the ‘wait staff’ near the bar. The bartender had also worked through the kitchen and was now trying to figure out a drink that tasted like fruit loops - - suggested by a customer. I had previously watched him make carrot juice, beat on lemon grass, and make a syrup of lemon grass and ginger chunks. He allowed me to sample from their ‘martini library’: four different styles of martini in plastic pipette bulbs – classic with a drop of blue curacao, an appletini, a negroni, and a lemon drop.
After lunch I went back downstairs where I saw the chefs preparing something with flash fried rice paper and tofu skin, which I was told would later be flavored with powders or sauces. At 4:00 the whole staff gets together in the kitchen and all of the different parties are discussed – food allergies, etc. I misheard ‘pescatarian’ as ‘Presbyterian’, and I couldn’t figure out why Presbyterians would have any special food requests! The chefs started to work on preparing the restaurant for service, cleaning everything up, getting plates out, etc., and at 5:00 they kicked me out.
I drove back home, and missed seeing Nicola in all of her Turnabout Dance finery. Cindy and I got dressed up and then drove back downtown. We arrived at the same time as everyone else - - but since I had been there earlier in the day, Cindy and I didn’t suffer through valet parking - - I knew where some god spots were. We were taken to the downstairs dining room where they seat private parties. I had ordered the five course menu in advance. I would have liked to try the 10 course, but as it was we were at the restaurant until 11:00pm. We started out with some cocktails - - a couple of orders of the martini library, chorizo flavored martinis, and a kir. If you go to the Moto website you can see what was on our menu. Many of us also ordered the paired wine tasting which I do not believe has been updated, as I recall a special, unfiltered, sake. We also got a few extra dishes, I assume because of my time there as a chef.
1) We started with an edible menu printed on rice cracker, with the menu in rebus format (the 5 course was five apple cores, the ten item said 8+2 over a golf green, and the 20 had a picture something got ‘G”, a teapot for T and a picture of Homer Simpson eating a donut for ‘Mmmm’. This was served with some kind of jellied champagne, and a chunk of poached pear on top of a dab of cheese. It was also plated with a dollop of pear puree.
2) Next we had the ‘greek salad’. This was a few pieces of octopus on a drop of pureed parsley and cream. Gail got the sea beans instead. This was plated with flash frozen kalamata olive flavored cracker, and served with a Chablis from South Africa.
3) This was the bacon and maple course. There was a small, quarter-sized biscuit crammed with bacon flavor. This was served with a cream brulee flavored with biscuit slurry with maple flakes. I don’t know if I really liked this one, but other people did. It was served with a chardonnay from Australia.
4) Merluzzo (hake) grilled to perfection served with puffed fried rice (shot from guns! [see Sgt. Preston of the Yukon]), creamed spiced tofu, sesame-oil flavored powder, and seaweed.
5) pasta and quail from the 10 course menu – freeze dried elbow macaroni with bits of smoked quail, served with a French grenache
6) hash browns and beef – this was a very interesting dish, as I had watched Chris prepare this. Chris had a whole tray of frozen mixed hash brown which he cut into 1.5” cubes. Then he had a whole block of cooked egg white (it looked like tofu), which he cubed into 0.75” or so. I remarked at how precise he was in cutting these items, and he told me a story about how some months ago Chef Cantu tasked him with cubing tomatoes. He had to select the tomatoes, blanch them, skin them, deseed them, and then cube them. The whole process took about six hours. When he was finished, Cantu took the pot of cubed tomato, poured it out on the table top, selected ten or fifteen pieces (out of the hundreds….), and then threw the rest away! This was also after Chris had been a chef at Le Francais for several years. This really teaches an aspiring chef a lesson…become the head chef! Actually, it reminded me a lot of the type of thing Sensei Toyoda would do to the black belt students to keep them humble. After this story, we got on the subject of knives, and of course I couldn’t resist telling him about the type of knife I used at work.
Tissue-Tek Accu-edge trimming blades
I promised to send him a website where he can check these out - about $5 per blade.
Anyway, this dish had a fried cube of hash brown with bacon sauce, a cube of egg white with a cone taken out of the middle and cooked (and green-colored) egg yolk reinserted, and thin strips of beef, with some radish sprouts sprinkled on the plate. This was served with a Napa valley Cabernet. There is also a special fork with a spiral handle with a big sprig of sage stuck in it for aroma.
7) Another course from the ten –item menu, the grapefruit brulee. This was the grapefruit drupes with the G-and-T frog egg things.
8) chocolate and raspberry freeze-dried exploded raspberry drupes with a crispy flourless chocolate cake and a lemon-lavender pastry
9) Biscotti and coffee – this is coffee ice cream in the shape of a biscotti and an espresso cup of a hot slurry of biscotti, served with a Madeira.
10) ice cream flapjacks – this is a drop of bourbon flavored maple syrup, while the silver dollar sized flapjacks are prepared at the table – a slurry of pancake mix is poured onto a liquid nitrogen cooled metal table. It melted in your mouth. I hope everyone enjoyed this meal as much as I did (although I think there was too much EtOH). We were joined by Barbara and Roger, Andy and Gail, Owen, and Jim and Amy Tuchler.
I know that there is a lot of stuff I didn’t discuss in this letter. I was very impressed with the ‘LEAN’ qualities of the kitchen. Everything has an assigned place. Under the working counter tops are labeled plastic storage bins filled with all sorts of oddities. I didn’t write about mixing tapioca powder with truffle oil, watching Chef Cantu make silicone molds of jalapeno peppers to make homemade jalapeno poppers for some future dish (unfortuantely, Chef Cantu was not cooking in the restaurant during most of the day; he was doing executive chef stuff), a slurry of baked beans being squeezed through a pastry bag into liquid N2 to make baked bean spaghetti. It seems that just about everything at the restaurant is created to defy your expectations. It was a great day!
Love, H.
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