Bean squid
In the gastronomic laboratory of the Twins Garden restaurant, brothers Ivan and Sergey Berezutsky, a 3D printer quietly buzzes. The chefs admit that the printer actually works silently, and they specifically asked the masters of the 3D Bioprinting Solutions laboratory to add sound “to create the atmosphere of a working device”. Together with them, the chefs have developed a unique product – squid printed with bean protein, which fully reproduces the taste, texture and aroma of a natural product.
“We believe that this technology is the future,” the Berezutskys say. – Including in the restaurant industry. It allows you to create a truly amazing product from a fairly simple product – beans. Our guests are delighted with the result every time. Naturally, no machine can replace a chef, but 3D bioprinting technology in restaurants in 10 years, in our opinion, will become something as common as using an induction cooker. Gastronomy is always evolving, and the use of modern technologies is one of the new logical turns in its development.”
With a printed squid, the Berezutskys amazed the international gastronomy community at the Madrid Fusion congress in January 2020. Under the motto “Essential Cuisine: Conscious Simplicity”, topics such as the role of Instagram in the restaurant industry, artificial intelligence, allergies and intolerances were discussed there. And the Berezutsky squid turned out to be in tune with most of them. Flavored with a couple of drops of parsley oil, it looks great in the photo, turns out to be the very product that will not harm if you are allergic to seafood, and indicates that the future in which humanity will print food for itself, not cook, has already arrived.
“Now we have a prototype printer in our laboratory. So far, it is, of course, very expensive,” the Berezutskys say. – But this is an absolutely standard story – a prototype always costs a lot of money, and mass production will be much cheaper. Someday it will cost no more than any kitchen gadget. The raw material for printing itself has a very low cost, as it consists mainly of beans. The main value is the formula of the mixture itself, we spent almost nine months on its development. But now the final product always has the same weight, the correct shape and is fully consistent with our prototype. Now one squid takes 18 minutes to print, but we are constantly working in this direction with scientists from 3D Bioprinting Solutions, and in a couple of months we will have a new printer that will significantly speed up the process.”
To try the bean squid, you need to book a place to taste the brothers’ new vegetable set at Twins Garden. It costs 15,000 rubles, and it is not known what will impress you more – squid, other food, or the world’s largest collection of vegetable wines that are created in the restaurant.
Dishes from boxing
You don’t need to book a table to meet another working cyberthought restaurant prototype – just download the mobile app and place an order. And then come and pick him up at Russia’s first contactless digital Lunch Box restaurant in the City of Capitals tower in Moscow City.
Digital Restaurant Lunch Box
Restaurateur Andrey Tyutikov came up with the Lunch Box as an alternative solution for time-saving office workers, but the project unexpectedly became a response to a hot agenda – this is almost the only restaurant in Moscow where contact with staff and other guests is really minimized. You can order from a menu of hundreds of dishes at any time and from anywhere. In order for the kitchen to start cooking, just press the “Start Cooking” button in the application. Dishes prepared without the use of semi-finished products and packaged will be available in the customer’s personalized box. By the way, it also opens on command from the application. “When you press a button on the phone, the mechanical parts move, which raise and lower the box door,” explains the operation of the system Tyutikov. – And it turns out to be an unexpectedly emotional moment for the guest – something abstract becomes quite real. For guests, this is something interesting, a new experience that was not there.
The most difficult, according to the restaurateur, was the combination of IT technology and engineering. I had to redo the design more than once so that it worked without failures. Since there are no attendants in the restaurant, it is possible to stay within the margins of profitability with the increased cost of dishes due to savings on salaries.
The entire project cost 27 million rubles, but Tyutikov is an optimist. Replication of the project, according to him, will cost several times cheaper, because the stages of developing the application and creating box engineering have already been completed. In addition, the Lunch Box may not be limited only to food – it can sell books, medicines, and become an innovative service system.
Just like in the Lunch Box, in the KFC robocafe, live people prepare food, and orders are taken through digital kiosks. At the same time, customers are offered to go through the biometric identification procedure – this will make payment faster, and when the user returns, the digital kiosk will be able to “remember” previous orders and offer previously selected dishes. The facial recognition system also provides access to the cell with the finished order, where the robot places it. The introduction of robotics into the restaurant process is, in fact, limited in this case. The miracle of technology simply moves the tray with ready-made food to the issuing cell.
And other techno experiments
Robots perform the function of attracting attention not only in Moscow, but throughout the country. In Blagoveshchensk, robots sell ice cream and coffee, in Voronezh they arrange beer tasting. There are Kiki Café robotic kiosks selling soft ice cream in Kazan and St. Petersburg, coffee is poured by robot baristas at Monty Café in Pyatigorsk and Moscow. So far, these are fairly simple mechanisms that are not capable of preparing food on their own, but the development of artificial intelligence leaves no doubt that sooner or later it will come to this.
Another part of the restaurant service that is being tested by modern technologies is payment. So, Visa, together with Bartello, launched a service for contactless payment for orders in restaurants through the voice assistant Alice. Visa cardholders just need to activate Alice in the Yandex mobile application, launch the Bartello skill, select the desired institution, place an order and pay using voice commands, following the prompts. Now most of the establishments connected to the system are clubs and bars, where you often have to wait for the bartender to take the order and complete it. Voice payment allows you to place and pay for an order without anyone’s help.
The experiments in the field of payment in restaurants do not end there. At the 800 Contemporary Steak restaurant, you can pay for tangible steaks, branded mashed potatoes and other food with cryptocurrency – ethers, bitcoins and so on. “Modern trends are moving towards the complete digitalization of the service sectors that we used to know,” explains the owner of the restaurant, part of the il FORNO Group holding, Genrikh Karpin. – Today, many people have online wallets, so we decided to introduce the possibility of paying with cryptocurrency. To our surprise, this option is in demand. We are testing payment using a QR code for holders of cryptocurrencies and tokens without loss for conversion to 800 Contemporary Steak and further we plan to integrate it throughout the holding.”