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Intellectual Ventures

November 30, 2018

Modernist Cuisine’s Nathan Myhrvold on Photography, Robotics, and Pizza

If there’s one man who you can trust to take some out-of-the-ordinary food photographs — ones that both celebrate the natural phenomena of food and dissect it— it’s Nathan Myrhvold.

For those out of the know, Myhrvold is a techy, inventive powerhouse: former CTO of Microsoft, founder of intellectual property company Intellectual Ventures, and driving force behind the gastronomic, boundary-pushing Modernist Cuisine.

Oh, and photographer. Myhrvold is the one behind all the photographs in the awarded (and exhaustive) Modernist Cuisine cookbooks, which draw you in with logic-defying high def shots of fresh produce and laser-cut interiors of bread at all stages of baking. Last year he began setting up galleries to display the photography prints, which currently have locations in Las Vegas, New Orleans, and now Seattle, home of Modernist Cuisine and Intellectual Ventures (plus plans to open one in La Jolla). Yesterday I stopped by the Seattle outpost to take a tour and chat with the man behind the camera.

Modernist Cuisine

Myhrvold being Myhrvold, (most) of the photos on display aren’t simply of the point-and-shoot variety. “Those are the exception, rather than the rule,” he joked. The others come to life thanks to a few things you don’t see in most photography studios: robots and lasers.

In the Modernist Cuisine workshop they cut things like metal mixing bowls, woks, and ceramic coffee cups in two so you can see what’s really going on when you whip egg whites or pour cream into your coffee. The robots are there to create easily predictable, easily repeatable actions so that the photographer can capture, say, the splash of a drink or explosion of a champagne bottle precisely on multiple takes.

One upcoming Myhrvold project which will surely feature robots, microscopic photography techniques, and lasers a-plenty is the Modernist Pizza Book. Like the 5-volume Modernist Bread book epic which came out in 2017, the forthcoming book will also be multi-volume and will tackle the history, science, and taste of pizza.

All types of pizza. Myhrvold told me they’d spent several weeks in South America awhile back, exploring regional pie types. The local specialty: rings of pineapple with a green olive in the center. “You’d say that’s not pizza, or that’s for me,” he said. “But they love it there.” The same love-it-or-hate-it mentality applies to an American classic: Hawaiian pizza. (Fun fact: Myhrvold told me it was actually invented in Toronto.)

Modernist Cuisine

This sort of polarization seems to go double for pizza, a food that’s arguably the world’s most popular single dish. Though it has universal appeal, pizza also mutates depending on local tastes — thus how we get things like pineapple-and-olive pies. To Myhrvold, this dichotomy is what makes pizza so interesting: it’s a food that’s simultaneously universal and exceedingly particular. And it’s also one that people really like to get up in arms about. I’ve almost destroyed friendships because I’m a strong believer that the New York slice is essentially cardboard covered in cheese (sorry).

One thing that really ruffles traditionalist feathers is the idea of automating pizza-making. “You’ve got Zume over on one end, that’s robotically created pizza,” said Myhrvold. “on the other end Naples insists you need to use wood as fuel.” The inconsistent heat of wood-burning ovens makes pizza cooking a lot trickier but, when done right, creates an excellent pie.

Zume may never be able to pizza that’s quite as good as a pizzaiolo with decades of experience (at least, not yet), but they can make pretty good pizza that’s fresher, hotter, and tastes better than the frozen stuff. Costco, which Myhrvold told me is the 13th largest pizza chain the U.S., is also leveraging automation. It has saucing and crust-pressing robots to help them churn out faster pies without the need for highly-trained cooks, which translates to a cheaper pizza.

For Myhrvold, there’s room in this world for all types of pizza. And I tend to agree: there will always be demand for artisanal pies made by a master pizzaiolo. But as Myhrvold pointed out, convenience is also closely tied to pizza consumption, at least in the U.S.: first came frozen pizza, then Domino’s came in with delivery (and later chatbots and drones).  And now there are pizza vending machines, pizza portals, and even countertop pizza ovens, all vying to provide you with a piping hot slice in the easiest, quickest way possible.

“Food spans the whole range from pure fuel to high art,” he said. “There’s nothing bad about using technology to improve that.” For now, though, Myhrvold is partial to a deep-dish slice from a Chicago style pizza joint in Seattle. Hold the pineapple.

May 31, 2018

The Food Tech 25: Twenty Five Companies Changing the Way We Eat

Here at The Spoon, we spend most days writing and thinking about those who are transforming what we eat. No matter whether a startup, big company, inventor, or a cook working on new approaches in the kitchen, we love learning the stories of people changing the future of food. So much so, in fact, that we wanted to share those companies that most excite us with our readers.

And so here it is, The Spoon’s Food Tech 25: Twenty Five Companies Changing the Way We Eat

What exactly is the Food Tech 25? In short, it’s our list of the twenty five companies we think are doing the most interesting things changing the way we create, buy, store, cook and think about food.

As with any list, there are bound to be a few questions about how we got here and why we chose the companies we did. Here are some answers:

How did we create this list?

The editors of the Spoon — myself, Chris Albrecht, Catherine Lamb and Jenn Marston — got together in a room, poured some kombucha (ed note: except for Chris), and listed all the companies we thought were doing interesting and important work in changing food and cooking. From there, we had numerous calls, face-to-face meetings and more glasses of kombucha until we narrowed the list down to those you see here.

Is this an annual list?

No, this is a list of the companies we think are the most interesting people and companies right now, in mid-2018. Things could definitely look different six months from now.

Is this list in a particular order or are the companies ranked?

No, the list is in no particular order and we did not rank the 25 companies.

Why isn’t company X on the list?

If this was your list, company X or Y would most likely be on the list (and that’s ok with us). But this is the Spoon’s list and we’re sticking to it (for now – see above).

And of course, making this list wasn’t easy. There are lots of companies doing interesting things in this space. If we had enough room to create runners-up or honorable mentions, we would. But we don’t (and you don’t have enough time to read a list like that).

So, without further ado, here is the Spoon’s Food Tech 25. If you’re the type that likes your lists all on one page, click here.


EMBER
Ember bills itself as “the world’s first temperature control mug,” which basically means you can dictate a specific temperature for your brew via the corresponding app and keep your coffee (or tea or whatever) hot for as long as you need to. The significance here isn’t so much about coffee as it is about where else we could implement the technology and relatively simple concept powering the Ember mug. The company currently has patents out on other kinds of heated or cooled dishware, and Ember has cited baby bottles and medicine as two areas in which it might apply its technology. And yes, it allows you to finally stop microwaving all that leftover morning coffee.

 


INSTANT POT
The Instant Pot is not the highest-tech gadget around, but its affordability, versatility, and speed have made this new take on the pressure cooker a countertop cooking phenomenon. It also has a large and fanatical community, where enthusiastic users share and reshare their favorite Instant Pot recipes across Facebook groups and online forums. By becoming the first new breakout appliance category of the millennial generation, the Instant Pot has achieved that highly desirable (and rare) position of having its brand synonymous with the name of the category; people don’t go looking for pressure cookers, they go looking for an Instant Pot.

 


DELIVEROO
We chose Deliveroo out of the myriad of food delivery services because of their Editions project, which uses customer data to curate restaurant hubs in areas which have unfulfilled demands for certain chain establishments or cuisine types. This model allows food establishments to set up locations with zero start-up costs, and also gives customers in more restaurant-dry areas a wide variety of delivery food options. Essentially, it’s cloud kitchens meets a food hall, with some heavy analysis to help determine which restaurants or cuisines customers want, and where. These “Rooboxes” (hubs of shipping containers in which the food is prepared) show that Deliveroo is a pioneer in the dark kitchen space, and are doing serious work to shake up the food delivery market.

 

AMAZON GO
There are any number of ways that Amazon could have been included in this list, but its Amazon Go stores are what we think will be the real game changer. The cashierless corner store uses a high-tech combination of cameras and computing power, allowing you to walk in grab what you want — and leave. That’s it. At its first location in Seattle, we were struck by how seamless the experience was. As the locations broaden, this type of quick convenience has the potential to change the way we shop for snacks, (some) groceries and even prepared meal kits.

 


INGEST.AI
Restaurants have more pieces of software to deal with than ever. In addition to all the delivery platforms they are now plugged into, there have to deal with payments systems, HR software, and inventory management software. And right now, none of those applications talk to each other. Created by a former IBM Watson engineer, Ingest.ai promises to extract and connect the data from ALL of those disparate software pieces and tie them together to give restaurant owners a holistic, data-powered view of their business. It also helps them have more precise control over their business and automate tasks like food ordering and staff scheduling.

Want to meet the innovators from the FoodTech 25? Make sure to connect with them at North America’s leading foodtech summit, SKS 2019, on Oct 7-8th in Seattle.

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May 6, 2018

Pablos Holman Sees a Future Where We Print French Bread & Strawberries

While 3D food printing is still in its early stages, inventor/hacker Pablos Holman believes we’ll eventually live in a world where printers in our homes spit out complicated foods like French bread and even something resembling strawberries.

“This isn’t as weird as it sounds,” said Holman, who spends his days working in the lab at Intellectual Ventures, Nathan Myhrvold’s invention and research organization that has become one of the most prolific invention centers – as measured by patents filed and issued – in the world.

According to Holman, wheat and other materials within bread could be stored in “printer” cartridges and turned into bread at the push of a button.

“What a chef is doing is putting wheat through a complicated process to manage texture,” said Holman. “What my 3D printer would do is put down a pixel of wheat, hydrate with a needle, zap it with a laser to cook it, rinse and repeat for every pixel, and it’s going to print you a meal.”

While it’s weird to think of foods traditionally cooked by humans instead being printed on printers, Holman thinks this method is vastly superior to the one-sized-fits-all production method of traditional kitchens.

“The (3D printed) meal is customized and customized for you,” said Holman, who before working at Intellectual Ventures helped to start Jeff Bezos’ space travel company, Blue Origin. “It avoids your allergens, and dietary restrictions and injects your pharmaceuticals.”

In short, Holman believes 3D printed meals could be optimized for each person’s specific dietary requirements and taste profile. “Now we have a way of correlating your diet to health effects. If you have to get off of sodium, we’ll drop it by one milligram a day for months, and you’ll never feel it happen.”

“Unless you have a personal chef, it’s almost impossible for people to do that kind of thing right now,” Holman continued. “What we really want to do is have the computer to know what you ate, know what health effects you are experiencing are, know how to tune your meals so that they’re optimized for you.”

In Holman’s view, the biggest challenge to ushering in a world of personalized printed food will be managing texture. But, he believes, it’s a challenge that is hardly insurmountable: “When you think about what a chef is doing, they’re managing flavor, managing aroma, managing nutrition and they’re managing texture,” said Holman. “I can buy flavor in a bottle. I can buy aroma in a bottle. I can both nutrition in a bottle. What’s left is managing texture.”

And, as Holman sees it, developing 3D food printers that can create food textures that are pleasing to the human tongue is just another step forward on centuries-long creativity continuum that brought us food like French bread and pasta. “We learn new textures are the time,” he said. “God did not invent pasta or French bread. Those are inventions. Humans make those.”

Holman is not shy about sharing this view. Five years ago he went to Parma, Italy, the birthplace of pasta, to speak at Barilla headquarters where he “told a room of full of twelve hundred Italians that God did not invent pasta.”

While Holman hasn’t been invited back, Barilla may have gotten the message anyway: The world’s largest pasta company has since launched its own 3D pasta printer.

If you want to listen to the full conversation with Pablos Holman to hear his views on the evolution of 3D food printing, the development of Intellectual Ventures lab and more, you can download the podcast here, get it on Apple podcasts or just click play below.

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