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With the ability to cut noodles, stir vegetables and fry eggs, food-serving robots have gone from a figment of our imagination less than a decade ago to running around and making delicious food in some of Beijing's restaurants.
At a restaurant called Wilwi, literally translated as "future flavors", which is located in Haidian District, a small crowd of people watch in fascination as three semi-automated robots help prepare all the food. The kitchen is in full view to the public so people can see what the machines are doing. Right now, they are making fried rice.
The robots don't actually look like what you might expect. There's no head or big, blinking eyes and as far as I can tell, there are no legs either. Instead, it looks like a huge cooking pot with an opening on the side.
Before the robot can make the fried rice, however, we must first cook the rice in a rice cooker. Afterwards, the rice is put into the robot we have here. The other ingredients come in little boxes. We have eggs, onion, corns and green peas. The machine will give prompts when it's time to add these ingredients. To start this machine, we just press a button on top. And here we go.
A dish takes about two minutes to cook and can feed 20 people. The robot can cook more than 300 dishes including mapodoufu, which is spicy tofu, and gongbao jiding, Kung Pao Chicken.
Now, we have added all the other ingredients and they are all being mixed together by some kind of blade.
What surprises me is the number of people in this kitchen. Normally, in a restaurant, there are more than ten people. But here, there's just one person operating all the machines. For dinner, one of the busiest times of the day, there are usually seven people operating the robots here.
The food at Wilwi is presented in large buffet-style of standardized dishes and diners can check the menu the day before on WeChat. Today, we have rice porridge, chicken soup, pickled vegetables, spicy tofu, steamed yams and of course, fried rice. There are also a number of potato dishes. Most of these are made by robots.
Let's find out how they taste.
"It all taste great. The presentation looks good too – very bright colors and good flavors. It looks very fresh. I've never experienced anything like this before. It's very interesting."
Besides making excellent dishes, the robots are also environmentally friendly. Minimum heating is used in the cooking processed so that none of the food tastes like they're burnt. Also, the ingredients come in recyclable packets which reduce the amount of trash in the kitchen as well as inside the restaurant. The utensils used by diners here are all recyclable as well and are sterilized after they are used.
The meals, according to the menus, consist of a blend of meat, vegetables, grain and calcium. According to the chef, who is busy at work, the meals provide a healthy balance to all the diners.
Besides being a restaurant, Walwi is also a sales outlet for these semi-automated robots. According to general manager Jiang Ping, most of his customers are managers at other restaurants and cafeteria at corporations. He hopes that by showcasing this advanced technology at his restaurant, he can introduce robots into people's lives.
"My main goal of opening a robot restaurant is to let people interact with these machines and let them become a part of people's lives. I predict that within 10 years, robots will become common. In each household, there will be a robot who can cook, aid the elderly members of the family, and act as a bodyguard to safeguard the family's wealth and security."
Although it seems inevitable that robots will take over laborious jobs from humans, as long as people love eating food, there will still be work for chefs to create delicious dishes. Robots are just there to provide a helping hand.
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