Back to School/the Future

I have just returned from a lengthy seminar on molecular gastronomy, put on for free by Paris AgroTech and starring the indefatigable Hervé This.

My companions and I, over two days in a stuffy salle, produced copious doodles and counted the minutes before the next coffee break. All in all, there were sixteen hours of lecture. For a field that is supposedly dead, This sure found a lot to say about it.

My notes from the seminar include terms that would be more at home in an episode of House than in anything to be found on the Food Network. Is maceration d'enzymes proteolytiques a concept with delicious applications, or an auto-immune disorder?

For further "research," I will today visit les Magnolias, my first 1-star and a purported proponent of molecular cuisine. I don't know whether to look forward to or fear eating food that may have been mixed with sodium alginate and dunked in a bath of calcium chloride.

In any case, I will report back.

Unless my throat is burned out, or I have turned into a robot.