"Don't play with your food!" Mom said. But the six people Time has chosen as culinary innovators for the new millennium are just not hearing it. They toy with the very idea of food — how it is prepared, packaged, filigreed, tricked up, dramatized. They know we must not only have our daily bread but also be able to make it novel — or nouvelle. And innovation can encompass cuisines haute and bas. The motto of chef Ferran Adria is a simple but lofty "creation means not copying others."

And that means bone marrow crowned with caviar as well as tagliatelle made of strips of jellied consommé . Then there are the workaday renovations: the store-bought zest that transforms the meat loaf, the iced tea in a bottle you can take on the run. Or the moment's fashion sensation: the Flirtini, invented by Ruven the bartender at New York City's Guastavino's, inspired by the HBO series Sex in the City ("Everyone copies it," he says, "but forgets the raspberries"). The secret is that food must satisfy not just the physical pangs