[Photos: Coral Von Zumwalt/Town & Country]
Check out "Quantum Kitchen," Bethany Jean Clement's article(not available online sadly) in this month's Town & Country on Nathan Myhrvold and his lair, the Modernist Cuisine labs over on the Eastside. The labs are housed in a 20,000 square foot space that used to be a Harley-Davidson service center. They play host to quite a repertoire of culinary notables: Thomas Keller, Jacques Pépin, Harold McGeee, oh and Andrew Zimmern.
The labs share space with Myhrvold's money spinning, patent loving Intellectual Ventures. What unites the two enterprises? Perhaps, Myhrvold's obvious delight in hoarding. Myhrvold takes great pride in telling Clement that (in her words) there's "another entire warehouse of you-never-know-when-you-might-need-it parts." When prodded by Clement, whether he would call himself a large-scale hoarder, Myhrvold happily answers, "Yes!"
As for whether Myhrvold is interested in democratizing his food by opening a restaurant, the billionaire refers Clement to Ferran Adrià's closure of El Bulli to focus on culinary research as an example of someone headed in the right direction:
"What Ferran is doing is like what we’re doing,” Myhrvold says with a confidence that implies that Adrià went at it the wrong way, only now liberating himself from the pesky demands of paying customers.It's worth picking up the issue for BJC's article alone. [Town & Country]
· All Nathan Myhrvold Coverage on Eater Seattle [-ESEA-]
· All Food Media Coverage on Eater Seattle [-ESEA-]
