Ever wondered what a dino burger tastes like?
The answer is ostrich or emu. While this may come as a surprise to some (I would have guessed lizard), what isn’t surprising is the guy who provided us with the answer: Nathan Myhrvold.
That’s because Myhrvold is one of the few people on the planet that can talk with authority about both paleontology and bread making.
I became familiar with Myhrvold’s eclectic interests first-hand last fall when I had a chance to visit the new headquarters for Intellectual Ventures and Modernist Cuisine. Within the space of an hour, I’d had a whirlwind tour that featured efforts to recycle spent nuclear rods, finding a cure for the Ebola virus and bread made with cricket flour. I also had a chance to sit down with Myhrvold and discovered the longtime CTO of Microsoft and founder of Modernist Cuisine has a thoughtful and interesting opinion on pretty much everything, and that was doubly so when it comes to food, cooking and kitchen innovation.
So when Myhrvold got on stage last month with the Wall Street Journal’s Wilson Rothman, I was pretty sure the discussion would be fascinating. I wasn’t disappointed.
The conversation ranged from the taste of dinosaur meat to Modernist’s new bread book to Myhrvold considering the question of whether steam should become an important feature of modern consumer ovens (answer: yes). He also addressed the subject of innovation in the kitchen and said there are two large opportunities: one of which is to use it to make us better cooks, the other is to help make our lives more convenient. He pointed to Keurig-based coffee models as a good example of fulfilling a consumer need for convenience, but also stressed how important it was to capture the imagination of consumer when introducing new product innovation into the kitchen.
Overall it’s a great interview, so I suggest watching the whole thing. If you’re interested in Modernist Bread, it’s available for pre-order on Amazon and will ship in May of 2017.
If you’re interested in other videos from the Smart Kitchen Summit, you can find them here. If you’d like our weekly newsletter with analysis and news about the future of cooking and the kitchen, subscribe here.
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