Robot kitchen gears up for service

GUANGZHOU－Lin Chaodai, a 52-year-old chef, had never thought about teaching robots how to cook his award-winning Cantonese cuisine. Nor had he imagined that a robot could be "trained" to cook with the skill and flair of a master chef like himself.

However, in the past year Lin and 10 other chefs from Shunde, a city in Guangdong province known for its exquisite Cantonese delicacies, have been recruited to develop a menu and "teach" robots to cook for a new restaurant in downtown Guangzhou, the provincial capital.

To ensure delicious flavors, Cantonese cuisine relies on meticulous heat control and precise cooking times and portions of ingredients, Lin said. He and other chefs recorded the recipes down to the smallest detail, and fed the data into computers before engineers began their time-consuming adjustments and tests.

Now, these robot chefs are ready to serve dozens of dishes, ranging from noodles to rice dishes, stirfries and desserts in a fancy dining place that also serves cocktails, which has drawn curious food lovers since opening on Jan 12.

Customers place their orders using a touch-screen device inside the restaurant. An ingredient sorting system collects the components of the dishes, selects the right portions and then delivers them to 32 robot-controlled woks.

The woks are set at an angle that allows the customers to watch their food being prepared in front of them.

When the dishes are completed, the machines then automatically clean themselves, consuming much less water than the average dishwasher.

It's not just chefs and bartenders that are replaced, service robots bring orders to customers' tables instead of traditional waiters.

The 46 robots in the restaurant were developed by Foodom Restaurant Group. "The average cooking time per dish of a robotic wok is three to five minutes," said Yan Weixin, head of the research and development department of Foodom.

Yan said the machines are designed to follow standards and instructions closely, while chefs are not up to scratch sometimes.

Intelligent dining is gaining steam in China as the expanding food market prompts the industry to go digital.

China's service robot market was estimated to reach $2.2 billion last year, up 33.1 percent year on year, higher than the global average growth. Robots used in the restaurant industry are in growing demand.

Using robots in kitchens can help solve staff shortages at restaurants, cut labor costs and improve management of staff members, said Qiu Mi, general manager of Foodom.

The robot kitchen is an attempt to innovate the dining business in China while retaining traditional flavors of the cuisine, Lin said.