At This Restaurant In America, Robots Are The Only Cooks Around

What do you get when you combine four MIT robotics students with a Michelin-starred chef? Apparently, you get a restaurant that cooks for you without anybody actually in the kitchen. And that¡¯s exactly what Boston¡¯s newest ¡°fast casual¡± eatery, Spyce, is.

Spyce, which opened its doors this week, is a restaurant that would¡¯ve probably been at home on ¡®The Jetsons¡¯. That¡¯s because it¡¯s kitchen is staffed entirely by robots. In fact, considering the woks in which meals are prepared are actually a part of the robots, it might be inaccurate to even call it a kitchen at all.

All a customer has to do once they walk in is go up to the touch-screen kiosk and select one of the bowl-based meals on the restaurant menu. Once you¡¯ve picked, the components going into your meal will drop into one of seven drum-like machines backstage. These autonomous robots will then handle everything else.

Spyce¡¯s robotic woks use magnetic induction to cook the food and then automatically rinse themselves after each order. Unfortunately, they¡¯re not advanced enough to actually prepare the components, so things like chopping vegetables has to be handled by human workers at a commissary kitchen elsewhere. These prepped ingredients are delivered to the restaurant, and two employees on site then handle the garnishing each order once it¡¯s done cooking. So yeah, you¡¯re cooking career isn¡¯t completely out the window just yet.

It¡¯s still quite an achievement though, to have machines automatically cook food in a professional setting with no supervision, not to mention that the restaurant has been getting some pretty good food reviews. In addition, Chef Daniel Boulud runs an open kitchen at the restaurant, allowing people to enjoy watching whirring machine parts prepare their meal.

Talk about living the future!