How Food Innovation Is Shaping Our Future
Photograph by Maciek Miloch, Prop Styling by Zuza Slominska, Food Styling by Nadine Page
Dominique Crenn recently visited the Bon Appétit test kitchen to show us the most challenging recipe she’s ever created. She executed complicated techniques with liquid nitrogen that were all the rage a decade ago.
These days she dazzles diners with innovative ways to cook mostly seafood and vegetables and focuses on sustainable farming practices. During our conversation for the Food People podcast, she explained that she had eliminated many animal products, including dairy, from her three-Michelin-starred restaurant, Atelier Crenn, until she found Bay Area suppliers who shared her values around kinder environmental practices.
Like many creative people, Chef Crenn lives in the future. Her vision for a sustainable organic food system is coming to fruition through the bounty of her Bleu Belle farm and being shared with diners through her restaurant menus.
It can take years of patience for everyday audiences to experience the impact of food science, technology, and research, and even longer for companies and distributors to catch up. That’s why in our March issue we wanted to explore innovation in the culinary industry.
Consider Row 7, the company cofounded by Dan Barber, which focuses on growing produce for flavor. Its first star was honeynut, a sweeter, smaller cousin to butternut squash, now common at specialty stores and farmers markets. Though the concept is very simple, the innovation of creating seeds that produce more nutritious and flavorful vegetables helps to shift the industry forward.
Contributor Ali Bouzari makes the case that we are living in the future of food. We are already experiencing the impact of satellite imagery to reduce overuse of crop fertilization, leading to better produce on grocery store shelves and kitchens. In dining, some restaurants are already using AI and other personalization and machine learning to help manage a busy service and book those elusive reservations.
Technology also helps bridge the past and present, cooking techniques and culture. Our editors have fallen back in love with steaming, and in South Carolina, culinary entrepreneurs are preserving traditional foodways.
As the arc of food innovation bends toward more people benefiting from research and creativity, it will be exciting to see how the way we eat evolves alongside those changes.
Seafood Innovators
ÁNGEL LEÓN
The chef-explorer of Aponiente in El Puerto de Santa María, Spain, reconsiders how all of a fish can be incorporated into a tasting menu.
DEMI JOHNSON
The high schooler was recently honored by the National Geographic Society for her work to restore the oyster population in Mississippi.
JOSH NILAND
The Australian chef specializes in reimagined fish flavors, including a chocolate cake that began as a paste made from fish bones.
Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit
