Straight From the MakerBot

Serious fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation probably remember the replicator, a wondrous machine capable of instantly synthesizing any food item you could ask for. Now, thanks to 3-D printing, that fantasy seems increasingly plausible. In recent years, researchers at Cornell University, the MIT Media Lab, and elsewhere have explored various methods for squirting foodstuffs through 3-D printers to produce everything from customized chocolates to astronaut food.

For now, none of these experiments is ready for the home kitchen. But 3-D printers are starting to make their way into the professional kitchens of adventurous chefs. In Valencia, Spain, the architecture firm Green Geometries Laboratory (GGlab) has been working with the chef Paco Morales to explore the possibilities of robotic gastronomy. Their collaboration began with 3-D printed plates, which are now used in Morales’s restaurant. From there, GGlab’s José Ramón Tramoyeres says, “It was kind of natural to go to food.”

Last year, Tramoyeres and Morales worked with the architect Deniz Manisali and the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia to produce a food-printing demonstration during Milan Design Week. The team modified a MakerBot Replicator to print chocolate treats, and later moved its setup onto a cart for a mobile demo during Istanbul Design Week. Now GGlab keeps a MakerBot in Morales’s restaurant, where it’s been experimenting with printing components of appetizers and desserts. So far, the team is limited to using soft foods that have a certain degree of viscosity—chocolate is good, as are cheese, avocado, and some pureed vegetables such as carrots and eggplant—and none of their creations have yet made it onto the restaurant menu. “We have to make it faster and more precise,” Tramoyeres says. “Each ingredient requires different pressure. We have to work on controlling that.” GGlab is talking to companies about develsoping either its own 3-D printing machine or a custom extruder to use with existing machines. “In avant-garde gastronomy, it’s going to be just another tool,” he says.