The Boston Restaurant Where Robots Have Replaced the Chefs (washingtonpost.com) 110
Started by a group of 20-something robotics engineers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology who partnered with Michelin-starred chef Daniel Boulud, Spyce in downtown Boston is founded on the idea that a fulfilling meal can be more science than spontaneity [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. From a report: The restaurant's founders have replaced human chefs with seven automated cooking pots that simultaneously whip up meals in three minutes or less. A brief description of meal preparation -- courtesy of 26-year-old co-founder, Michael Farid -- can sound more like laboratory instructions than conventional cooking. "Once you place your order, we have an ingredient delivery system that collects them from the fridge," Farid said.
"The ingredients are portioned into the correct sizes and then delivered to a robotic wok, where they are tumbled at 450 degrees Fahrenheit. The ingredients are cooked and seared. And once the process is complete, the woks tilt downward and put food into a bowl. And then they're ready to be garnished and served." Spyce bills itself as "the world's first restaurant featuring a robotic kitchen that cooks complex meals," a distinction that appears to reference burger-flipping robots like "Flippy," who plied his trade in a California fast food kitchen before being temporary suspended -- because he wasn't working fast enough.
"The ingredients are portioned into the correct sizes and then delivered to a robotic wok, where they are tumbled at 450 degrees Fahrenheit. The ingredients are cooked and seared. And once the process is complete, the woks tilt downward and put food into a bowl. And then they're ready to be garnished and served." Spyce bills itself as "the world's first restaurant featuring a robotic kitchen that cooks complex meals," a distinction that appears to reference burger-flipping robots like "Flippy," who plied his trade in a California fast food kitchen before being temporary suspended -- because he wasn't working fast enough.
Complex? (Score:5, Insightful)
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If it can be cooked by a robot, it didn't need a Chef in the first place.
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"If it can be cooked by a robot, it didn't need a Chef in the first place"
Right, all we know the 'robot' is doing is applying heat to the food.
The main work seems to be done by humans, from adding garnishes to portioning the ingredients into little pots and sending them to the right tumbling wok, which they aren't showing or explaining to us for some reason.
"Once you place your order, we have an ingredient delivery system that collects them from the fridge," Farid said. "The ingredients are portioned into t
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Well, if it's just as good, and $2 cheaper, I say bring on the "robots".
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Well, if it's just as good, and $2 cheaper, I say bring on the "robots".
Meh, robots cook with too much oil.
Re:Complex? (Score:4, Insightful)
I cook.
It's not complex cooking at all. Quite frankly I'd like to see them make a robot that could cook steak, potatoes, side veggies meal....because I'm quite certain they couldn't. Even a quality hamburger would confound a robot.
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false, you know nothing about cooking nor how to make a quality sandwich with ground beef. Note it hasn't been done, though a burger flipping robot was made. I am not writing of burger flipping.
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how to make a quality sandwich with ground beef
Your problem is trying to make a sandwich with ground beef.
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Your problem is trying to make a sandwich with ground beef.
It's called a hamburger steak sandwich. HTH, HAND.
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It's not complex cooking at all. Quite frankly I'd like to see them make a robot that could cook steak, potatoes, side veggies meal....because I'm quite certain they couldn't. Even a quality hamburger would confound a robot.
Sous vide is the best way to cook all of those and it is very easily automated.
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No, you must have defective taste buds. What a disgusting thing to do to most foods.
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Obvious troll is obvious. Try harder.
Steak is easy, because you just have to shine a flashlight on both sides and it's cooked.
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My steaks cook for 4 minutes in a cast iron pan as hot as my electric oven/range can get it. My only interaction is spreading a little canola oil and some seasoning on each side, flipping it 3 times, and moving it from the range into the oven. It could be easily automated and it makes a pretty good steak. Maybe other people like to get more elaborate with their preparation, but I'm happy with what I produce. A baked potato on the side seems easy and I'm sure we could find a robot-friendly veggie dish.
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What is the oven part for? I'm asking seriously.
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To cook the steak. The pan part is merely to sear the outside and start the maiard reaction. However, the steak won't be cooked through since there isn't enough prolonged heat in a pan.
Granted, if you like your steak raw or rare, you can skip the oven step.
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Everything is inferior to using a sous-vide and then grilling it. Very tender steak, well done on the outside. Even the worst steak can be made extremely tender.
And I bet it could be automated based on the volume. It just wouldn't be fast, but it would be quite insensitive to the exact time in the bath and grilling it afterwards would also be easy.
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I've had sous-vide -> sear and smoker -> sear and I prefer smoker. It's not what I do, but I would if it was convenient.
Either a sous-vide or a smoker should be easy to automate.
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Everything is inferior to using a sous-vide
Until you die of cancer from all the plastic residue in your boil-in-the-bag meals.
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Boiled meat...Spit.
Low and slow is for tough cuts, not steak. Even there, leave the British methods in Britain. Smoke that brisket, don't boil it...what are you, Irish?
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Tip: Let the steak come to room temperature. Then the insides will be a nice medium rare by the time you get a char on the outsides.
Don't worry about nasties because they will all be murderated by the cast iron pan.
Not recommend for ground beef unless you cook to recommenced temperature.
Sous-vide (Score:1)
Sous-vide [wikipedia.org] accomplishes the same thing.
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No need for an oven for that, it's as done as I want it inside when it comes out of the refrigerator.
And I'm not a fan of grill marks, I prefer a flat surface.
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You sear first to stop the juices escaping while it's in the oven.
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I do a minute and a half on each side in a 500 F oven to cook the meat through. I first sear it on the range with the pan considerably hotter and finally rest it a couple of minutes wrapped in foil. If I wanted to cook the steak on the range, I'd leave it longer on lower heat. I've done that too; that method doesn't require putting all the smoke detectors in the bathroom.
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It makes it more tender.
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If you overcook your steak, you should let it rest for about half the cook time. If you really ruin it, you need to wrap the shoe leather in foil, so it doesn't become full tilt jerky.
If you cook your steak right, you can't get it to the table is less than half the cook time. It should be at the body temperature of a living cow in the center. The trick is to get a thick enough steak so it's perfect when it's seared and releases from the grill, about 2 inches.
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Sounds overcooked.
My favorite method is with a cast iron skillet that's almost glowing, and a coating of my custom spice blend on the steak.
Coat steak with spice blend, toss into skillet, pour on a bit of melted butter. There will be flames. Wait about 30 seconds, flip, more butter, more flames, 30 more seconds, and put it on a plate to rest for a few minutes.
It's best done outside or with an industrial extractor hood. Electricity won't cut it for the heat source.
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I like to do mine on top of a charcoal chimney before finishing in the oven to preference. It's slower than the Cast Iron Pan method for a single steak, but if you're doing more than that the chimney is faster. The chimney can fully sear an ice cold steak in 60 seconds or less, and be ready to do a dozen more. With the Pan you can really only do one or two at a time and you gotta clean the pan up a bit between steaks as well as get it back up to temperature after the oven cycle.
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'ice cold steak' is a mistake.
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I agree, I'm just pointing out how incredibly hot and hence fast the method is for getting the entire surface of the steak seared.
The perfect method would be to sous vida the steaks first to 130, and then sear and serve. I don't have a setup for doing that though so I usually let them warm up on the counter top while I get everything else going. Then when the chimney is ready we sear the steaks and put them in the oven to finish.
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The body temperature of a living cow is 101.5 F. That's the ideal temperature for the center of a steak IMHO.
Just sear it as you say, and get a thick enough steak so the center isn't overcooked (read cooked at all).
Skip the oven, skip the boiled meat.
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A charcoal chimney would make my apartment smell terrible.
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The appropriate steak order is in fact "Scare it with a flashlight."
The more common term is as I'm sure you know "blood rare" but I've had that served overcooked before. "Scare it with a flashlight" gets the waitperson's attention, gets a bit of a laugh, and gets you a steak that isn't overcooked.
I'm not that much of a beef person, but if I'm going to eat it, I'm going to eat it cooked properly, which is to say barely cooked at all.
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Steak is actually quite complex for a robot. Thickness of steak, temperature of steak, toughness of steak, desired level of cooking, age of steak, the cut, all affect the outcome and the chef must react to them to deliver a professionally cooked steak reliably. The automated fry pots are not robots, they are just automated fry machines, not even close to being chefs. As for prepare the foods they night before, freshly cut vegetables taste better than old cut vegetables, bad things happen with chlorophyll an
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I'm not sure I agree that stir-fry qualifies as a "complex meal."
Well maybe complex is not the right word but you can make varied dishes using the same cooking technique, like here's beef, pork, chicken, shrimp, vegetarian with rice or noodles, different accessories and spices etc. and it's made-to-order so it can be exactly how you want it with robot precision. Personally I think the latter could be the killer feature here, sure you could explain it to a human chef but then you'd have to instruct him in detail every time which would get tedious and you could never fine
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It's not that complex, but I bet you could automate most of a Noodles & Co. this way.
Most restaurant meals aren't complex (Score:4, Insightful)
X Cuisine? (Score:3)
I have a robot chef too (Score:1)
It's commonly referred to as "microwave".
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They gave him the blob fish!
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You saw that episode too, eh? :)
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I've seen ALL the episodes.
Yeah (Score:2)
I saw that episode [imdb.com] of the X-Files.
what else? (Score:2)
This already has a name. (Score:4, Insightful)
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every problem looks like a skull.
I guess what will happen next! (Score:5, Funny)
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Everyone knows robots only eat alcohol
Health insurance and vacation time (Score:2)
Re:Health insurance and vacation time (Score:4, Insightful)
Worked on machine controls for over thirty years, and the machines get great health insurance. As soon as they get sick, a human is dispatched to help and we have parts on site to fix the most common health problems. As for vacation time, they get all of the time they need off for maintenance.
As for myself, I haven't had a real vacation in over twenty-five years and haven't been to a doctor since I was 13, which was a little over forty years ago.
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So there's a labour shortage, meaning companies have to compete for resources.. and yet the resources are being abused?
That doesn't add up.
If there's a shortage of programmers then demand sensible working hours and holiday. It's not fucking hard.
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That's actually one of the questions in economics right now - why does America have such a low unemployment rate (at least officially) yet wage growth is stagnant.
There's a few possibilities - that the unemployment rate doesn't reflect people who would work for more, but wouldn't work for the amounts being offered, thus causing a cap on prices (think stay-at-home-parent who would need a hig
The Bender Flipping Unit (Score:2)
"Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
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Daffodil.
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If there are no people cooking, who is going to spit in my food?
Bender can do that too.
Sounds like canned or frozen food to me (Score:3, Insightful)
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When you eat at McDonalds are you really expecting a dining experience, or do you just want to get your food in the least amount of time possible?
Because that's all this is; glorified fast food that currently enjoys a novelty factor and niche marketing. Once that sparkly wow factor novelty wears off, it'll have all the same charm and appeal of an automat [wikipedia.org]. It'll join ranks with the places that already prepare food such as frozen meat patties that are thawed and cooked by traveling down a heated conveyor be
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This is more on the fast casual side, like Chipotle. Does it really matter if a human or a robot wraps the burrito? This isn't some Michelin star restaurant here. I'll gladly take the robots if it means better food quality, fewer mistakes, healthier options, etc. for the equivalent or lower price.
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Dirty dishes (Score:1)
I have one question: Is a human required to run the dishwasher station?
The answer determines my sentiments about the whole concept.
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Compostable or disposal bowls/forks, no dishes to clean.
and if you don't tip the robo Chefs this happens (Score:2)
http://tvline.com/2018/02/28/t... [tvline.com]
Cooks Not Chefs (Score:5, Informative)
This restaurant likely still has a chef. Instead of managing a kitchen full of cooks, he or she manages robots.
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Quite frankly I'd like to see them make a robot that could cook steak, potatoes, side veggies meal....because I'm quite certain they couldn't. Even a quality hamburger would confound a robot.
I agree with this 100%. Otherwise it's more or less this. [flickr.com]
Do not want.
Just wait until I order... (Score:3, Funny)
broccoli'); drop table vegetables;--
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broccoli'); drop table vegetables;--
Come on, don't be silly! Who orders broccoli?!
You guys have no wokking experience. (Score:2)
There's a special move in stir-frying in a real wok, besides tossing and stirring. Once in a while you have to identify the uncooked bit of a meat and press it down with the tip of the spatula onto the bottom.
Good luck getting diarrhea from AI uncooked chicken.
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That's simply a matter of color recognition and force feedback interpretation.
Like bread making machines (Score:2)
For $60 at Walmart, you can get a bread maker, where all you do is dump in the ingredients (wait, that part isn't automatic???), push a button, and two hours later you have fresh baked bread. All you have to do is take it out and slice it (not automatic either).
Maybe by some definition, bread makers are robots. These "robotic chefs" are robots by that same definition.
Complaints about food quality (Score:1)