Call it food for thought.
A museum dedicated to all things edible will open its doors in Williamsburg next month, and the food geeks responsible say their gallery of gastronomy will get New Yorkers psyched about the science and history behind the things they eat every day.
“We want to show people how exciting it is to learn and care about food,” said Peter Kim, executive director of the Museum of Food and Drink on Bayard Street, which opens Oct. 28.
And if there is one man who can make chemistry and anthropology thrilling, Kim said, that man is the museum’s founder David Arnold — the mad culinary scientist famed for using liquid nitrogen and a centrifuge to create the futuristic cocktails at Momofuku’s Booker and Dax bar.
“There are people who call him a ‘culinary Google,’ ” said Kim, who left his full-time job as an attorney to help Arnold bring the museum to life. “You can ask him any question about anything and he is very likely to have the answer.”
The museum will cook up one exhibition at a time — starting with “Flavor: Making It and Faking It,” where visitors will be able to taste the difference between real and synthetic vanilla, create their own artificial aromas, and discover why monosodium glutamate makes everything so damn delicious.
The curious epicureans already road-tested the concept a few years back when they created a replica of the giant “puffing guns” that food manufacturers used to make breakfast cereals like Cheerios and Kix in the early 20th century, and exhibited it around town.
They showed off the machine to tens of thousands of oglers at the World Maker Faire in Queens last year, and the audience had a blast, Kim said.
“We really wanted to show people how MOFAD would take a very meaningful story and turn it into something exciting and engaging for people of all ages,” he said.
And the Williamsburg repository is just a taste of things to come — Arnold and his team plan on opening an even larger museum in the next five years.
“Flavor: Making It and Faking It” at the Museum of Food and Drink (62 Bayard St. between Lorimer and Leonard streets in Williamsburg, www.mofad.org). Opening Oct. 28. $10 ($8 students and seniors, $5 under 18s, free for kids under 3).
