GeekWire
The new home of Delve Kitchen and ChefSteps at Pike Place Market is part kitchen, part lab and part magic show. Clockwise from left: Chris Young, managing director; Ed Starbird, director of business operations; Ryan Matthew Smith, creative director; Grant Crilly, director of culinary operations; and Ben Johnson, development chef.
The natural light in this place is amazing.
That thought kept running through my mind last week as I checked out the combination kitchen/lab/studio coming together on a lower floor of Pike Place Market,?overlooking Elliott Bay, on the edge of downtown Seattle.
It struck me because the people creating this place are known for their work on?Modernist Cuisine?? the epic, five-volume cookbook-to-end-all-cookbooks, featuring recipes engineered in a stainless-steel suburban lab, and photographs shot in a carefully lighted studio, created in collaboration with of one of the technology industry?s more controversial figures.?
This space couldn?t be more different ? with fresh fish and produce just up the stairs,?the afternoon sun crossing the sky out the window, and tourists walking past the door, unaware of the magic happening inside. And no, Nathan Myhrvold isn?t involved this time.
This is the home of?ChefSteps, a free online culinary school getting set for an upcoming launch. It?s also the home of?Delve Kitchen, a ?food product design consultancy? that will work with commercial clients and help to fund the operations of the online school.
Both projects are the work of three?Modernist Cuisine?alumni ? chefs?Chris Young and Grant Crilly, and photographer?Ryan Matthew Smith ? and a team of collaborators.
GeekWire
Kitchen or machine shop? Some of the tools of the trade inside Delve/ChefSteps.
But for all that has changed, they still have the basic tools of the trade ? including bandsaws, induction burners, commercial blenders, dewars of liquid nitrogen, Pacojets and high-speed centrifuges. When I asked for a?demonstration?of one of their latest tricks, Crilly and development chef Ben Johnson took me through the process of turning mung bean into a substance with the properties of an egg white, using a blender, liquid nitrogen and a centrifuge.
?What?s cool about this is at least you have the start of a plant-based protein that starts to act like scrambled egg,? Crilly explained. ?There?s no other product out there right now that you can set with heat, and it?s thermo-irreversible, so it won?t melt later on.?
Meanwhile, to the south, in a machine shop in Seattle?s Georgetown neighborhood, they?re distilling liquid nitrogen out of the air, to help provide one of the key ingredients for their work.
In other words, these are not your ordinary startup founders.
But they do share a lot in common with other entrepreneurs in this tech-centric town. They?re funding the business themselves, and trying to stay nimble and responsive as they pursue their big vision.
?The three of us are friends, and we said, ?You know, there?s something here when you put the three of us together, we can do interesting things,?? Young said. ?There is a real opportunity to do something where we can more actively engage the community, where we can iterate more quickly, where we can keep innovating because we can shorten the loop, with almost instant feedback.?
GeekWire
Brainstorming content ideas on a whiteboard in the Delve/ChefSteps space.
They?re also motivated by the idea of bringing top-notch culinary classes to a wide audience.
?You kinda have to want to be a professional chef to go to cooking school, but there?s a whole world of people who would like to know more about cooking,? Young said. ?Where do they go? We said, ?Well, let?s create a cooking school.? Online seemed like the best way to reach the whole world.?
They?re inspired by ventures including?online repair guide iFixit?and?Sebastian Thrun?s?Udacity educational project. The ChefSteps site will include videos, step-by-step photo guides, and interactive recipes, with guest experts making regular appearances.
They?re joining a crowd of recipe and cooking sites based in the Seattle region, from veterans such as?AllRecipes?and?BigOven?to relative newcomers including the?Rouxbe Cooking School?and?KitchenPC.
One way ChefSteps will remain free is by offering users a chance to buy kitchen tools and other products needed to make the featured dishes ? part of what Young calls a ?not-obnoxious monetization strategy.?
ChefSteps has?launched a preview course?and already received some nice attention in the food world thanks to?a post on the blog Eater.
They?re clearly having fun. For example, in?a post?titled, ?So, We Have This Pig,? they?poll users of the site?to decide which cuts of the pig they?re butchering should be featured in lessons on the site.
Their setting at the Market also promises to put a unique stamp on the venture.
?We have such incredible light, and all throughout the day it changes,? Crilly said, describing their video plans. ?There will be so much variation. It will all be stunning, but you?ll see some stuff in the daytime, some stuff in the nighttime. We were like, you know what, screw it, we?re not going to fake it all the time. Plus it costs an arm and a leg to do that. So we?re going to roll with it.?
To get a sense for what it will be like, here?s a video from a ChefSteps preview course:
Salmon prepared at 104?F (with tasty trimmings) by the ChefSteps crew.
More from GeekWire:
?
green bean casserole sweet potato recipes the sound of music celebration church new york auto show 2012 tulsa easter eggs
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.