graduated from the Western Culinary Institute (now a Le Cordon Bleu School) and spent the next two years staging on the West Coast. After about 50 such two-week to one-month internships, he was ready for a paid job. One day in February 1999, he decided to try to get a job with his idol, Charlie Trotter. "I made it my life's goal to become a sous chef for Charlie Trotter," Cantu remarked. "I literally just flew out [to Chicago] one day with $300 in my pocket and no place to stay". Despite initially rebuffing Cantu as rude, Trotter agreed to an interview the following day and hired him. Cantu eventually worked his way up to become one of Trotter's sous chefs. On his days off, he began to explore new ways to prepare and present food. In 2003, Cantu learned of a chef opening at a soon-to-open restaurant called Moto. The restaurant's backer, Joseph De Vito, initially suggested that the restaurant focus on Asian fusion. However, after Cantu cooked an elaborate seven-course meal featuring an exploding ravioli and a small table-top box that cooked fish, De Vito instead hired Cantu. Upon Moto's opening in January 2004, guests were initially confused by the tasting menu's format and content, but the restaurant soon became notable for its experimentation: dishes included carbonated fruit, menus printed on edible paper using a conventional printer filled with edible ink, and fish and bread cooked from the inside out using a class IV laser. At weekly brainstorming sessions, Moto chefs were encouraged to explore and prototype new takes on ordinary food by discussing how they could change foods they ate that week. Although the restaurant was sometimes criticized for "emphasiz[ing] cleverness over deliciousness", Moto earned a Michelin star in 2012. Chefs were also split, variously describing Cantu as a "faddish flavor of the month" or a "creative genius." Grant Achatz described Cantu as "an ambassador of creative food." Together with Achatz and Graham Elliot, Cantu helped earn Chicago a reputation as the center of the innovative food. Ferran Adria also praised Cantu as a chef with the capacity to explore "what is the limit–what is cooking, what is not cooking". Cantu's second restaurant, iNG, focused on a concept he called "flavor-tripping" – the use of the "miracle berry" to make sour foods taste sweet. The restaurant lost money and was closed in the Spring of 2014. After