Inhaling your food

Currently the most overrated trendy restaurant in America is Alinea in Chicago, owned by Grant Achatz. It serves incredibly complicated dishes; for many of them, the smell of the plate is more important than the flavor.

Achatz is the main proponent of the aroma movement and he is not alone. Daniel Patterson in San Francisco owns Coi, where the obsession with aromas is such that “Coi’s waiters may instruct you to dab essential oils of grapefruit,

ginger, black pepper, and tarragon on your wrist as a prelude to an

appetizer made with the same ingredients.“

It was only a matter of time until somebody brought the aroma craze to the masses. That somebody is Harvard bio-medical professor David Edwards, who figured out a way to combine aerosol and chocolate at the science-cum-art school Le Laboratoire in Paris. The result is Le Whif, a zero calorie spray that you inhale. It’s “eating by aerosol.”