The first two episodes of Planet Green’s TV show "Future Food" focus on failure in a way few cooking shows ever have. Homaro Cantu and Ben Roche of Chicago’s famed experimental restaurant Moto are sent back to their laboratory and kitchen in both episodes. Why? Because, as the Tuesday premiere "Something's Fishy" shows, their "seafood" is not up to snuff. And a second episode shows that their crepes prove too odd for diners on Chicago’s streets.

But there’s a good reason their cuisine pleases no one: The Moto guys’ concept of food, which is thoroughly covered in the season opener, rests on their ability to manipulate items into tasting like a familiar product. In trying to make fish dishes without using fish, for example, watermelon becomes tuna, and tofu becomes sea bass and scallops. The motivation often involves consciousness-raising -- overfishing drove the seafood challenge, the French food episode was based on using recycled batter to create crepes -- that takes the items to a level beyond gimmickry.

"We’ve actually found a way to create food that is greener so there is no waste, no containers, no trees," Cantu said during a recent visit to Southern California while the series was being edited. "(The show) is our attempt to spread to people who don’t have a chance to come to our restaurant. We want people to change the way they look at food because everyone is told from birth to look at food one way. The more creatively you look at it, all this unknown potential exists. It’s just thinking about what goes into what you want to eat and thinking about texture and flavor."

Moto, the rare restaurant to appear in Gourmet, the New York Times and New Scientist, serves tasting menus of 10 or 20 courses, all of which have simple, common descriptions such as pepperoni pizza and Caesar salad. The first thing a diner eats is the menu itself, which can taste like bread and butter or Champagne and caviar. Cantu proffers a Disneyland simile: "It’s Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride."

Energetic executive chef Cantu, 32, hails from Portland, Ore., where he studied at Le Cordon Bleu; Roche, a pastry chef by trade, is from Beaufort, S.C. Both worked at Charlie Trotter’s before Cantu opened Moto, which is regularly lumped in with Alinea Restaurant when the subject of molecular gastronomy in Chicago is broached.

"Look at it from a distance and they do look similar," Cantu notes, pointing out his approach is pro-organic farming and anti-chemicals. "It’s very futuristic thinking, but when you dine (at the restaurants) you notice a definite difference. Going to Alinea is like going to an art museum and going to Moto would be like going to a standup comedy club. Atmosphere sets us apart."

The show will air new episodes every Tuesday through May 18. On the eve of the show's 10 p.m. premiere this week, we asked Cantu and Roche some questions:

What is it about Moto that makes it the proper setting for a show looking at the future of food?

Cantu: Moto is basically a testing ground for broader ideas. I’m a hippie at heart. The green side (of Moto) doesn’t get talked about as much. We take known products and give them to you in a different way that’s more green, more healthy and all that good stuff, but it’s insanely fun. We make ketchup and French fries out of health food products, so it tastes better. There’s a bigger vision there.

A good example of that broader vision is, right now, we have a fish made from white beans. At one time, Ben had a desert nacho on the menu that was made with Mexican products with "ice cream" that was mango puree. We juiced them, add liquid nitrogen, and it looks like cheese. The salsa was kiwis tossed with mint to look like green chile salsa. Sour cream was flan. You swear that when you look at it, it is nachos. The experiments that go on the menu have larger functions: fighting world hunger, to go greener but not sacrifice flavor.

Does that mean necessity drives these experiments? What drives the ideas?

Cantu: In one episode, we take all the scraps we would throw away and create dishes. One is an apple. It’s shaped like an apple and it’s green but it’s entirely cores and skins. We do the same thing with peanuts, taking the shells, roasting them and turning them back into peanuts. They use peanut shells in cleaning products, but why not use it as food, increase fiber. In one episode, we took a bratwurst and burned the crap out of it with a flame thrower. We remix it like a sausage maker would, re-season it and it turn it into a bratwurst that people go nuts over. You can apply that technique to anything burned. You could do it with toast.

So as much as this show depicts what you do in your lab, there’s an element that can be done by the home chef?

Roche:  75 percent of what we do on the show can be done at home.

Cantu:  Look at the McNugget we made out of corn products -- corn flour, simple syrup, corn juice and corn meal. Is somebody willing to spend two hours making that? People won’t spend two hours making McNuggets, but the corn ones will  cost you a fraction of the amount (of a chicken). That's where we’re going. I’m not saying we’re going vegan, but if that’s what it means to go green then that’s what it is. People are not going to give up on meat until you give them meat that is better.

That suggests food products could come out of the show or Moto.

Cantu: I don’t care about products, I care about change. And if I can launch products, I’ll launch products. If somebody else can do it, great. Moto is a high-end place so once those trends start they work their way down. We’ve seen some of our ideas wind up on midlevel restaurants. That’s very good. Next step is mass produce. This creates relevance to the show --  we’re giving solutions. Let’s say Tyson decides to make this (corn McNugget). What happens to all those workers now that they’re making synthetic chicken. The corn grower will sell more corn so it supports the farmers. It’s common sense.  We like to think we are very simple at first and then we work our way backwards. Let’s face it, we’re stuck here. Let’s fix things while we’re here.

Photo at top: Homaro Cantu (right) and Ben Roche in Moto lab. Credit: Planet Green / David Nicolas.
Second photo: Ben Roche (center) and Omar Cantu (right) share crepes at Art Institute. Credit: Planet Green.

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