Weird Science

Testing those limits, in fact, is what gets Cantu's juices flowing. But with more attention and accolades, he has faced the challenge of continuing to innovate, a classic business problem faced by any idea-driven company, from Apple to General Electric. Today, Moto's menu still changes frequently, sometimes every week. Often, it's a result of suggestions from his staff, almost all of whom both wait on tables and work in the kitchen, an unusual arrangement Cantu prefers because it lets them both interact directly with the customer and earn a share of tips.

But the innovation process at Moto and at Cantu Designs, although self-created, is one that closely tracks the approach of such design groups as Ideo. Every week, Moto's maniacs brainstorm new ideas, create prototypes, test, and then tweak them until they hit the (often literal) sweet spot. Failure is expected and welcomed, though it can be dangerous, such as the time the kitchen staff played with tobacco-infused custard and came down with acute tobacco poisoning. (The dish never made it to the menu.) "You have to be fearless," says Roche, Cantu's chief experimenter. "A lot of times it doesn't work, sometimes you create something completely different, and sometimes it works. There are no boundaries at all."

The same approach applies at DeepLabs, the funky, secretive Chicago product-design firm that works with Cantu and Linda Kawano, Cantu's vice president of new business development, to create utensils. The group's goal is to change the way we think about how we consume food by improving on a system that has barely evolved in hundreds of years. Who's to say that a fork, knife, or spoon, not to mention a chopstick, is the ideal implement? "[Cantu] is very different from a chef in that he's [operating] more from a technology and futurist standpoint," says Bart Brejcha, DeepLabs' founder.

In addition to Cantu's corkscrew fork and spoon, DeepLabs has a prototype for the Serrator, a combination fork-spoon-knife that was inspired by the spork (that sad plastic thing you get at KFC) but actually works. There's also a utensil that could deliver an entire dish from within its handle with the push of a button. It could be used in space or even as a baby-food delivery system. "We want to prove to companies like Target that this is not just a trend, but taking human dining to the next level," says David Mazovick, a DeepLabs consultant.

Cantu is obsessed with patenting his ideas in a world in which the battle for intellectual property can make or break a business. With the help of his patent attorney, Charles Valauskas, a partner at Baniak Pine & Gannon, he has 12 patents pending, including the polymer box, the utensils, and the edible paper, with many others on deck. He makes his staff and virtually anyone who visits the kitchen sign nondisclosure agreements, and he favors sentences, usually uttered with a wink, like "I'd love to tell you, but it's top secret."

"He just disgorges inventions," Valauskas says. "A typical session lasts about three hours, and after that I'm exhausted and he's ready to go, with two pads of paper filled."

Lllleeetttt the battle begin!"

We're on the set of Iron Chef America, the campy Food Network cult hit, and Cantu is about to pull out the big guns in his battle with "Iron Chef Japanese" Masaharu Morimoto. Dressed in green to promote Cantu Designs, he calmly prepares a cocktail flavored with horchata, a rice-based beverage, pours it into three glasses for himself and his two sous chefs, and then, with the aid of the digital camera rigged up to his foil-covered "food replicator," takes a picture of the group clinking glasses. Next, he takes the drink and pours it into the machine. Soon, the replicator spits out the horchata-flavored picture, which is served to the perplexed judges along with a dessert of Mexican chocolate pudding with beets and caramelized popcorn. Jeffrey Steingarten, a cantankerous Iron Chef judge and noted food writer, professes himself charmed and delighted. "Some of us love eating paper," he says with only a touch of irony. "Because that makes the dish." The show will air in July.

While that's certainly an attention-getting novelty on a show like Iron Chef--"We've never seen anything so wildly original," says the show's host--it's Cantu's "edible surfaces" that may offer the best opportunity for achieving his global ambitions. He believes that they could be used to feed people on long space missions, for military MREs, or even as a way to get long-lasting food to people in refugee camps. "My goal with this is to deliver food to the masses that are starving," he says. "We give them something that's healthy, that has an indefinite shelf life, and that is supercheap to produce. A guy like Paul Allen could take this thing and wipe out world hunger if he wanted to."