How 3D printing is shaking up high end dining

Paco Perez is experimenting. The chef has won several Michelin stars for his restaurants. At one of them, La Enoteca at the Hotel Arts in Barcelona, he is busy creating a new dish.

He places a plate inside a strange-looking machine that looks a bit like a large microwave oven. He touches the controls, and a few minutes later, removes the plate, which is now decorated with a delicate, flower-like design.

Next he adds more ingredients: caviar, sea-urchins, hollandaise sauce, egg, and a "foam" of carrot.

He calls his creation "Sea Coral". "It's as if we were on the sea floor," he explains. "We see a coral with sea urchins on it – then when we eat, we discover all the profundity of the sea and its iodine flavours".

The centrepiece of the dish, the "coral," is made of a seafood puree in an intricate design that would have been extremely difficult to produce by hand. But it has been piped on to the plate by a new kind of 3D printer.

Mr Perez is delighted with the results and the capabilities of the machine.

"It's very interesting what today's technology is contributing to gastronomy" he says. "Creativity is shaped by what technology can do".

**LINK**

Mash it up in a liquidiser (or buy a set of M&S pre made purees)

Poke at an app on your Iphone on the way home and the printer knocks out your dinner when the Iphone GPS sez you are 5 minutes from the front door

It's a funny old world