I just saw the chefs and creators of the restaurant Moto, Chicago, United States; create food to resemble food that we are familiar with but which tastes nothing like the familiar food our palates would've anticipated after taking in the tantalizing visual appearance of say a plate of nachos which instead of being savory is in fact served as dessert with sweetened chips, cheese created out of a liquid nitrogen-treated mango sorbet and beef created out of chocolate! On the other hand, they transformed familiar foods like a carrot cake to look like the planet Jupiter with a shell of liquid nitrogen-treated ground carrot cake! This made me wonder what effect would this kind of taste-bud tricking and visual deception have on one's gastronomic experience?
We eat as much with our minds as with our hearts and last of all our stomachs! Food is all about enthralling the senses and going on a journey without moving too much from the dining table; being transported to places which are thousands of miles away; to times which we have no other ways of traveling back to besides through the magic of our senses. Craving for certain food and the pleasure which comes with being able to enjoy that with someone close and dear to you is perhaps one of the best forms of happiness! Craving is a state of mind which makes us restless till we find what we are looking for; I wonder if we were really craving a plate full of cheesy nachos and found instead the dessert created by the chefs at Moto; would the element of surprise and awe make us forget the regret of not finding what we were craving for; that this deception may actually be exciting enough to strike a cord somewhere between our minds and stomachs? When you are expecting something and you find something even better; do you stop wanting what you so wanted when you started out or does it make the desire to fulfill that want; that craving keener? Well, I don't know the answer to that but it sure makes for some good food for thought.
