Video: Expo 2015 - Seeds & Chips: If the future of food is a chocolate printer, let me try it
2024 Author: Cody Thornton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 12:26
A quiet sunny Saturday afternoon in Milan, little traffic, easy parking and all smooth. Expo 2015 is still a month away. I feel lucky today: it is a beautiful day, I came to Seeds & Chips, "the event where food and technology meet" with the specific purpose of tasting the food released from 3D printers.
I've seen it on TV, I've read about it on the web, and today is the day when I can finally see how it works up close.
On the other hand, on the Seeds & Chips website, among crowds of food startups, there are also 3D printers.
As soon as we enter, needless to say, the first stand we meet is that of Eataly: from here you can do the virtual shopping only by taking a picture of the product on the panel, and then find it at home.
Nothing new, of course, still serves to promote e-commerce on the site, they explain. Anyway, I have to find the printers and eat, let's not lose sight of the goal.
But dodging the exhibitors is not easy, since there are very few visitors, and there are those at the stands who can't wait to share their brilliant technological-food and wine idea.
For example, there is a solar-powered oven that could solve a lot of problems, not only where energy is not easily at hand, but also for strictly green summer barbecues and outdoor areas.
Solar radiation, amidst reflections from mirrors and tempered glass, transform the cooking compartment into a mini-greenhouse.
In the meantime, the conferences begin, but there is no mention of sitting down. From a distance, a stand where a device resembles a dehumidifier and a glass of water with very green slime on the surface stands out.
In reality you have to queue, wait your turn, because the few people who are visiting the spaces focus on this strange thing.
It's called khai-nam (literally water eggs in Thai) and it's the smallest vegetable on earth, so small that you can even show it under a magnifying glass. Tiny yes, but it is also the fastest growing "plant" in the world. It takes 48 hours to double in volume, and you can make it grow and multiply even at home thanks to that strange gadget full of lights (with the addition of natural fertilizer cartridges).
That said, what do we do with khai-nam?
Obviously we can make fruit juices, smoothies or season pasta making a Thai-Filipino substitute for our pesto: it is a super-super food (double ration of "super" since in a single coffee spoon there are the properties of 5 portions of fruit and vegetables).
In the mouth it is still a chopped salad, the taste is not the end of the world, it is fair to say, but always better than goji berries as far as I'm concerned. To understand it better, it looks like slightly "broccolata" grass.
We pass through an endless string of vaguely nebulous startup booths, the kind you don't understand from the name or even from the bored looks of the exhibitors.
Many try to "lend a hand to small producers who do not have an e-commerce", but there are also those who will lend a hand to the long-awaited tourists of Expo2015 and send the wines they will fall in love with directly to their home around the world: it's called winezon and around 500 labels can already be purchased online.
Yes, it's okay to lend a hand to others, but I'm looking for hedonistic insights while waiting to get to the infamous moment of the 3D food printer.
In the meantime, we chat with two girls who introduce us to TheGustibus, an app under construction thanks to which (for now) info-images storage is done. When everything goes as it should go, a photograph of the packaged product will suffice to find out where else to find and buy it (in addition to the possibility of purchasing it online).
It should no longer be a problem for gastrofighters who are victims of applications to look for that thing they ate on holiday in Sicily to give an example. A classic: an idea that a six-year-old could have had, only I hadn't thought of it.
We are also won over by the idea of Mamau, a private take away. Refrain from chefs or aspiring chefs, otherwise Striscia la Notizia arrives to put his nose into it.
Obviously, to appreciate this platform you don't have to be part of the human type of conspiracy theorists, you have to rely on the culinary skills of others, and above all you have to be an absolute advocate of home-made food, even if the house is not yours.
For the collection of the dish, we agree directly with the cook. I have some doubts, who knows if I would really do it, and in any case there are no dishes to taste at the stand, perhaps it would have been nice to show that the cooks are not poisoners.
From a distance I see an object. I dive in, of course. I do not deny that in the midst of all these demonstrations on tablets, e-whatever and virtual tastings I am pleased to ask this nice gentleman what this disk would be.
Nonetheless, Pizza Hut in Ontario will be supplying La Comanda customers this summer, apparently with a fridge magnet.
Just a click (well, I said it: I think I heard it 400 times in my afternoon here) on the display and your order starts. Through bluetooth, family menus, favorite dishes and dishes that are ordered more often can be compiled on the PC, so that the order request reaches the recipient with a single touch.
Could the wine list on Ipad be missing? "What news", you will say. But with WineAmore you can also start from a dish and see which wine is suggested for pairing. Faster than a sommelier, in short.
As I look around looking for printers, I come across Gualtiero Marchesi's smile. Here, between one phone call and the next ('that he is always a VIP), he sits at his academy's booth.
They explain to us that it is a prototype that is able to recognize the foods present on the plate through a particular computer vision technique. But it doesn't really exist, and they are still studying it.
Because in my opinion it is impossible to recognize chicken broth from beef broth, especially if you are a computer camera. But I, you know, have never understood anything about these things. And in any case, national Gualtierone seems to be in great shape.
Here we are. Here is the chocolate printer. It is small, I imagined it would be more cumbersome and in any case here there is only this: the one to print the chocolates, on the site they could also use the singular.
We wait, observing closely and also from behind the printer, the annexes and connected ones.
In the meantime, I think about what I can ask Liang Hao (his name is written on the business cards at the stand), and above all with what form I would like to have a chocolate printed. And I wait, and I wait. And then I take a walk, because nobody can be seen here.
In the press room, my companion and I, a professional brochure collector, are dedicated to chips: there are good ones.
Then we go back to the stand: still no one.
In the end (I'll make it short, but we waited a very long time) we are told that the Anglo-Chinese founder of Choc Edge has not been well and has returned to the hotel. Unofficial rumors are circulating, however, that they say they saw it at the presentation of the US pavilion at Expo which must be nearby.
Disappointment and annoyance.
I'm sorry, I wanted to tell you about the taste of the printed chocolate. But it doesn't stop there, it's a promise.
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