Truly Inspiring!

I was in Chicago this past weekend and made a point to go to Moto. In fact, you could say that I accepted an invitation to go to Chicago so that I could go to Moto...

As I discuss in my book, instead of using traditional cooking techniques, a handful of chefs are experimenting with “molecular gastronomy,” which involves stretching the limits of cooking in all sorts of creative and unusual directions. These restaurants use equipment and materials straight out of a laboratory and play with your senses in wild ways. At Moto, the kitchen is stocked with balloons, syringes, and dry ice, and the goal is to create food that is shocking yet tasty. They have a “tasting menu,” where you actually eat the menu, which might, for example, taste like an Italian panini sandwich. Moto strives to break the rules with each dish they serve, from “delivering” food that looks like packing peanuts to the table in FedEx boxes to making a dessert that looks like nachos but is really made up of chocolate, frozen shredded mango, and cheesecake. Each dish is designed to push the boundary of how you imagine food should look and taste as they “transmogrify” your food into surprising shapes and forms. One of their chefs, Ben Roche, says their goal is to create a circus for your senses. They question every assumption about food preparation and presentation, develop brand-new cooking techniques, and even design custom utensils that are used to consume the food.

The experience was NOT disappointing. In fact, I was blown away. The 20 course meal was remarkably inventive! My favorite concoction looked just like a big, smoking Cuban cigar in a metal ash tray. Despite my instinct to push it away, I bit into it... It was delicious! The filling was duck confit, wrapped in steamed chard, and the ashes were finely ground black and white sesame seeds. It looked exactly like a smoking cigar!



The courses kept on coming and I literally begged them to stop since I was so full... until they started on the dessert. My favorite was the Tiramiso Ice Cream Panini with Biscotti Soup. We normally dip our biscotti in coffee. But, with this dessert, you dip the coffee in the biscotti! They served a grilled ice cream sandwich with delicious pound cake filled with frozen espresso ice cream and marscapone cheese. You dipped it into an amazing biscotti flavored soup. Wow! Here is a snapshot:



I urge you to take a look at some video clips of their chefs in action.

Peek inside....

You can now read the first few pages of each chapter in my new book, What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20, care of HarperCollins. The widget is not so beautiful, but it works.... Enjoy!

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The Problem Hunter

I have never met anyone who is more obsessed with solving intractable problems than Mir Imran. He is not only a serial entrepreneur, he is a parallel entrepreneur! He has started over 20 companies, has over 200 patents, and is aways running many new ventures at once.

Mir is best known for being one of the founders of the implantable defibrillator. Since then, he has passionately pursed incredibly diverse medical mysteries. He looks for the most daunting problems across the entire medical landscape, from neurology to cardiology to gastroenterology, and pulls together teams of scientists and engineers to develop solutions. He has his own incubator, called InCube Labs, which is essentially a well equipped laboratory, in which he nutures these new ventures. During each day he switches roles endlessly.... Sometimes he plays scientist, sometimes entrepreneur, and other times he is the investor. When asked if there is ever a conflict of interest, he playfully answered, "If you don't have a conflict of interest, then you aren't doing anything interesting..."

I think you will enjoy this interview with Mir Imran.

Wall of Possibilities

Two years ago, I was in Beijing for work and got into my head that I needed to see the Great Wall at sunrise. This was much easier said than done... I asked the concierge at the hotel for help getting a taxi at 3:00 AM (to arrive at the Great Wall at 5:00 AM) and that was a dead end. I asked my colleagues, but they couldn't help. And, I asked taxi drivers directly to no avail. Meanwhile, several friends and colleagues became excited by the idea and decided to join me. They agreed to meet me at 3:00 AM in the hotel lobby. Needless to say, I had to figure out a way to make this happen...

I looked around and found an English language school near the hotel. I figured that someone would at least speak English and be able to help me with my quest. I wandered over and was eventually introduced to a 17 year old student high school student who spoke English quite well. I spent some time finding out about him: He was a talented athlete and a musician, and was in the midst of writing his college applications for schools outside of China. He knew of Stanford and said that he dreamed of going there some day. BINGO!

I offered him a deal... If he could help get me and my friends to the Great Wall at sunrise, I would write a letter of recommendation for him for college. It took him a nanosecond to accept my offer. To make a long story short, he made it happen and offered to come along a the translator.

The bad news is that I got sick and couldn't go on the excursion.
The good news is that my friends had an amazing experience.
The bad news is that the car they were in broke down on the way back.
The good news is that if I had gone, I would have missed my flight.
The best news is that this student and I still correspond and plan to meet up again in Australia, where he is now a college student.

Just another reminder that problems can certainly be opportunities...