Tea... Earl Grey... Hot...

The other afternoon, Jenni and I succumbed to the desire for Panera Bread for lunch. For those of you that have never had the pleasure, Panera Bread occupies a weird niche in the restaurant scene, high-quality fast food in a warm, inviting environment. Think the sitting area of Barns & Noble or Borders that serves artisan sandwiches, soups, and salads on, in, or with its own delectable breads.

The weirdly cool thing about Panera Bread, at least at the three locations I've been to, is how amazingly fast they are at preparing damn tasty food. You'd be hard pressed to get your drink and find a seat before your coaster pager goes off. That's pretty impressive considering how long it takes McDonald's to get me sub-standard sustenance.


After commenting to Jenni about their super-speediness, she pointed out that it's really not that surprising, given the little they really needed to do to serve sandwiches and soup. Admittedly, whereas a sandwich of elaborate complexity or even a panini still only requires minimal cooking time, just microwaving a Big Mac will take a while. "It's not like they're roasting a chicken back there," we joked (we had some friends over last week for homemade roast chicken).


This got me to thinking.


Can roasting a chicken ever be made faster than by the current several hour process in an oven? An answer invariably came to me from Star Trek. By the 24th Century, humans can produce any type of food or drink (as well as clothes, weapons, etc.) in a device called a replicator. The classic example is of Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) who frequently replicated Earl Grey tea by saying "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot."

The idea is that a machine takes either energy or matter in another form (see E=mc²) and assembles it in another desired form. If you rearrange carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, etc. in the the right order and in the right thermodynamic state, you can make a perfectly hot, perfectly prepared roast chicken dinner. Even better, you can reverse the process on the dirty dishes and leftovers, so there's no cleanup!


Now you might think this would be the end of the chef, but someone needs to cook the blueprint. More than that, different recipes of the blueprint need to be includes in the menu. Otherwise, life on a starship would just be too bland culinarily.