LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — Bob Perry's culinary path is one that stretches across four decades.
He's worked across the country, traveled across the world, but he never forgot his Kentucky roots.
His family has called the Bluegrass home for centuries so it's only natural he ended up back in his home state as Chef in Residence at UK.
A role he's held for 17 years which he says have been the best years of his career.
"I’ve gotten involved with a lot of different stuff. Involved in bourbon, neurogastronomy now which is taking me into space," Perry said.
Did you catch that? Space.
Chef Perry has been collaborating with some of the top names at NASA to innovate how to get higher quality to food for astronauts to enjoy while exploring the final frontier.
“We’re looking at the Mars mission which will be seven months to get there, a year on the planet and seven months to get back. No one in space has ever gone longer than three weeks without being re-supplied," Chef Perry said.
The collaboration has led to Perry looking at food in a completely different way.
Almost on a molecular level.
He's working on everything from how to retain the natural flavor of foods, including fresh and medicinal herbs, to getting everything condensed and dehydrated to meet the strict weight and measurement parameters for space travel.
“Anything that goes on has to be weighed exactly to the tiniest fraction how much everything weighs on the space station," Chef Perry said.
"A lot of our food is dehydrated so it’s been fun to play around with this to make different foods and different applications.”
It's an opportunity Chef Perry calls an honor.
Space innovation and neurogastronomy were certainly never on the list for his career but he's enjoyed being able to find a new way to be creative while hopefully enhancing the life of the men and women going where no human has gone before.
“It’s an education for me too. That’s the beauty of working in a division one university is that there’s a lot of really cool people around you doing a lot of really neat stuff. For my part, everybody eats," Chef Perry said.
