When I was working for Dave Arnold in 2008, every idea he had was grandiose and, to most people, really seemed impossible. After working with him for a week or two, I realized (as did everyone else) that his dreams pretty much all became reality. Scoring a huge dewar of liquid nitrogen for the International Culinary Center? That seemed against code, but it traveled in its own elevator and eventually into our lab. Creating a bar that would serve truly unpretentious cocktails that would take tens of thousands of dollars of equipment and vase knowledge of food science? We all thought it would be many years down the road – but Booker & Dax opened at the beginning of 2012. And it’s amazing.
The Museum of Food and Drink seemed like his dream among dreams. And it’s been truly happening for over a year! With a team of rad, food-passionate people, MOFAD is off the ground with roundtable discussions about topics that matter, AMAZING benefit dinners, traveling exhibits, and even a package of cereal for Vice President Joe Biden! FYI, MOFAD’s team of believers and contributors includes food lovers and makers Harold McGee, Mario Batali, Wylie Dufresne, David Chang, Questlove, Christina Tosi, Nils Norén … can you even handle any more of these names? There are more.
MOFAD’s first exhibit, BOOM! The Puffing Gun and Rise of Cereal, uses a 3,200-pound, whirling puffing gun manufactured in Omaha, Nebraska (wooo!!) to explosively puff food. The puffing gun creates a mobile food education experience that travels to streets, parks, plazas, and schools in New York and beyond. My friend and I traveled to the edge of Omaha to find Puritan Manufacturing, the only place still making the puffing gun, to meet Gary, the only man at Puritan who can run the puffing gun. We watched the thing run and ran several tests for safety, all with the NYC MOFAD team waiting with bated breath to see if this thing would actually be safe to take around the city for demonstrations.
While my time working with MOFAD has passed, my love and excitement for it absolutely lives on! Can you imagine?! A whole freaking museum dedicated to the history and culture of food and drink. It’s just my dream is all.
Follow MOFAD on Twitter and Facebook for their updates – they are all seriously interesting. And if you love food (if you don’t love food, you’re on the wrong site anyway), you will LOVE to see the photos from their benefit dinners alone. My love for MOFAD cannot be contained in one post – head on over to www.mofad.org to learn all about it.