Homaro "Omar" Cantu Jr. (September 23, 1976 – April 14, 2015) was an American chef and inventor known for his use of molecular gastronomy. As a child, Cantu was fascinated with science and engineering. While working in a fast food restaurant, he discovered the similarities between science and cooking and decided to become a chef. In 1999, he was hired by his idol, Chicago chef Charlie Trotter. In 2003, Cantu became the first chef of Moto, which he later purchased. Through Moto, Cantu explored his unusual ideas about cooking including edible menus, carbonated fruit, and food cooked with a laser. Initially seen as a novelty only, Moto eventually earned critical praise and, in 2012, a Michelin star. Cantu's second restaurant, iNG, and his coffee house, Berrista, focused on the use of "miracle berries" to make sour food taste sweet. He was working on opening a brewery called Crooked Fork at the time of his suicide in 2015. In addition to being a chef, Cantu was a media personality, appearing regularly on TV shows, and an inventor. In 2010, he produced and co-hosted a show called Future Food. Through his media appearances, he advocated for an end to world hunger and thought his edible paper creation and the miracle berry could play a significant role in that goal. Cantu volunteered his time and money to a variety of charities and patented several food gadgets.
Early life Cantu was born in Tacoma, Washington, on September 23, 1976, to Laurie Ann Roberts, later of Portland, Oregon, and Homaro Cantu, later of Salem, Oregon. His father was a fabrication engineer and Cantu developed a passion for science and engineering at a young age. He disassembled the family lawn mower three times to learn how it worked, and his "Christmas gifts would wind up in a million pieces." A self-described problem child, Cantu grew up in Portland, Oregon. From the age of six to nine, he was homeless. He would later credit the homelessness for his inspiration to make food and become a social entrepreneur. At the age of twelve, Cantu was nearly jailed for starting a large fire near his fathers house and began working at a fast food restaurant. Cantu later described the owner's purchase of a tandoori oven as spurring his interest in cooking. After he completed high school, Bill and Jan Miller, a couple who took in troubled teens, offered Cantu a place to live under the condition that he attend culinary school.
Cooking career Cantu graduated from the Western Culinary Institute in Portland (later a Le Cordon Bleu School) and spent the next two years staging on the West Coast. After about 50 such two-week to one-month internships, he was ready for a paid job. One day in February 1999, he decided to try to get a job with his idol, Charlie Trotter. "I made it my life's goal to become a sous chef for Charlie Trotter," Cantu remarked. "I literally just flew out [to Chicago] one day with $300 in my pocket and no place to stay". Despite initially rebuffing Cantu as rude, Trotter agreed to an interview the following day and hired him. Cantu eventually worked his way up to become one of Trotter's sous chefs. On his days off, he began to explore new ways to prepare and present food.
In 2003, Cantu learned of a chef opening at a soon-to-open restaurant called Moto. The restaurant's backer, Joseph De Vito, initially suggested that the restaurant focus on Asian fusion. However, after Cantu cooked an elaborate seven-course meal featuring an exploding ravioli and a small table-top box that cooked fish, De Vito instead hired Cantu. Upon Moto's opening in January 2004, guests were initially confused by the tasting menu's format and content, but the restaurant soon became notable for its experimentation: dishes included carbonated fruit, menus printed on edible paper using a conventional printer filled with edible ink, and fish and bread cooked from the inside out using a class IV laser. At weekly brainstorming sessions, Moto chefs were encouraged to explore and prototype new takes on ordinary food by discussing how they could change foods they ate that week. Although the restaurant was sometimes criticized for "emphasiz[ing] cleverness over deliciousness", Moto earned a Michelin star in 2012. Chefs were also split, variously describing Cantu as a "faddish flavor of the month" or a "creative genius." Grant Achatz described Cantu as "an ambassador of creative food." Together with Achatz and Graham Elliot, Cantu helped earn Chicago a reputation as the center of the innovative food. Ferran Adria also praised Cantu as a chef with the capacity to explore "what is the limit–what is cooking, what is not cooking". Cantu's second restaurant, iNG, focused on a concept he called "flavor-tripping" – the use of the "miracle berry" to make sour foods taste sweet. The restaurant lost money and was closed in the Spring of 2014. After iNG closed, Cantu opened a coffee house called Berrista focused around the same concept. At the time of his death, he was preparing to open a brewery/brewpub called Crooked Fork with his friend and former Moto manager Trevor Rose-Hamblin. In September 2016, Rose-Hamblin and another of Cantu's associates, Matthias Merges, opened the brewpub, now renamed Old Irving Brewing Company.
Cantu was also a prolific inventor, filing more than 100 patent applications, and signing deals with NASA and Whirlpool for use of his inventions. Inventions included new utensils, a polymer cooking box that allows food to continue cooking after it is removed from the heat source, and an edible printer he called the "food replicator" in homage to Star Trek. Cantu also converted Moto's office into a "state-of-the-art indoor farm to grow vegetables – complete with a vortex aerator". Pete Wells credited Cantu with pioneering the use of intellectual property licensing as a source of income for chefs.
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