My Compliments to the Chef, Er, Robot
My Compliments to the Chef, Er, Robot
Automated machines take over New York kitchens
By Charles Passy July 20, 2019 10:00 am ET
Robots are making their way into New York City’s
restaurants.
A growing number of dining spots throughout town are
using machines to prepare all manner of food and drink, in many cases replacing
the employees who would normally handle the task. Think gizmos that can do
everything from slice a sushi roll into eight uniform pieces to mix the perfect
happy-hour cocktail.
And when no machine is available for the job, some
restaurateurs find an automated solution of their own design. Nat Loganathan,
owner of the newly opened Dalup Modern Indian, a fast-casual restaurant in
Chelsea, used his engineering and computer background to build a device that
makes dosa, the crepe-style item popular in Indian cuisine.
Mr. Loganathan fashioned the machine in his Connecticut
garage from an odd assemblage of parts, costing under $3,000, that included a
motor shaft assembly from a lawn mower. He said he is pleased with the
consistent quality of the dosa it makes.
“A machine doesn’t have a bad day,” he said.
But Mr. Loganathan’s self-made device is a small affair
compared with the handful of machines in use at the fast-casual restaurant
MakiMaki Sushi chain, which has two locations in Midtown Manhattan. The dining
spots put tens of thousands of dollars of technology into place to handle tasks
ranging from mixing the rice with vinegar, which is a key step in sushi
preparation, to slicing the finished rolls.
MakiMaki owner Kevin Takarada, who once worked as a sushi
chef in his parents’ Miami Beach, Fla., sushi restaurant, agrees that machines
make a more consistent product. But just as important, he said, is that they
can work faster: He estimates that his Japanese-made automated systems can
produce about 300 rolls an hour, which he said is about 50% more than his small
culinary team could prepare without the machines.
In the case of Social Drink & Food, the bar at
Midtown’s Yotel hotel, one of the chief advantages of using a cocktail-making
machine is reducing waste.
The device the bar uses measures the amount of liquor in
each drink to the smallest of fractions. That means no over-pouring, which is
the economic bane of many a bar, said Gil Rubenstein, who owns the company that
operates the food-and-beverage operations at the hotel. The cocktail machines
start at $28,000, according to Smart Bar USA, the company behind the devices.
While automation offers a restaurant many benefits, the
main one is about keeping labor costs down, said Arlene Spiegel, a New
York-based hospitality consultant. And that is especially critical at a time
when dining spots in the city are feeling financial pressure because of
increases in the mandated minimum wage.
Ms. Spiegel also noted that a younger, tech-savvy
generation of customers has no issue with robots preparing their food.
“They’re used to having machines take the place of real
live experiences,” she said.
Still, restaurateurs are quick to note that they have
hardly replaced all their staff with machines. At the Yotel bar, for example,
only certain orders are prepared by machine, Mr. Rubenstein noted. And
customers always have the opportunity to interact with a bartender if they
choose.
Some chefs remain wary of automation, saying machines
might work in some settings, but they have their limitations.
Kazushige Suzuki, head sushi chef at Sushi Ginza Onodera,
a high-end Japanese restaurant in Midtown, said a machine can’t prepare food
with certain nuances in mind.
“Doing it by hand is much better and more respectful of
the ingredient,” he said.
Jonathan Shepard, executive chef of the Harlem Pizza Co.
and Harlem Burger Co. restaurants, pointed to another issue.
“A robot is not going to recognize a regular” customer,
he said.
Comments
Post a Comment