Meet one of the most visionary technology and business leaders of our time, Nathan Myhrvold, spend the day at The Cooking Lab in Bellevue, Washington, and have a staff meal with the Modernist Cuisine team.
The Cooking Lab is home to the state-of-the-art research kitchen and laboratory that is the backbone of Modernist Cuisine. Stocked with a centrifuge, rotary evaporator, freeze dryer, rotor stator homogenizer, pizza oven, laser cutter, autoclave, and even a soft serve machine, the lab is a culinary wonderland. You will work beside their team of chefs, chemists, physicists, and machinists in the pursuit of new cooking innovations.
To make it an experience you will never forget, you will take home a copy of The Photography of Modernist Cuisine signed by Nathan and the Modernist Cuisine team. This massive and stunning book features 312 pages filled with photographs, techniques, and the stories behind some of our favorite images.
Nathan Myhrvold, founder of The Cooking Lab, co-author of Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking and Modernist Cuisine at Home and author of The Photography of Modernist Cuisine, has had a passion for science, cooking, and photography since he was a boy. Nathan did postdoctoral work with Stephen Hawking at Cambridge University researching cosmology, quantum field theory in curved space-time, and quantum theories of gravitation before starting a software company that would be acquired by Microsoft. As his career developed, he still found time to explore the culinary world and photography. While working directly for Bill Gates as the chief technology officer at Microsoft, Nathan was part of the team that won the Memphis World Championship Barbecue contest. Nathan retired from Microsoft in 1999 to found Intellectual Ventures and pursue several lifelong interests in photography, cooking, and food science. During this time, some of his photographs were published in America 24/7 (DK Publishing, Inc., 2003) and Washington 24/7 (DK Publishing, Inc., 2004). Unable to find practical information about sous vide cooking, he decided to write the book he had hoped already existed—one that provided a scientific explanation of the cooking process, the history of cooking, and the techniques, equipment, and recipes involved in Modernist cuisine. Inspired by this void in cooking literature, he decided to share the science of cooking and wonders of Modernist cuisine with others, hoping to pass on his own curiosity and passion for the movement.