How dining is going digital: AR dishes, virtual culinary journeys and high-end meals that will take your breath away
- Working with software designers and visual artists, chefs around the world are using augmented and virtual reality to enhance the dining experience
- In Thailand, a hotel hosted an immersive culinary journey where a tiny virtual chef travelled the world on the table in front of guests
What came first, the 3D chicken or the augmented reality egg? Digital dining is making the transition from fad to mainstream, with interactive, computer-generated feasts being rustled up around the world.
Starring “Le Petit Chef” – a tiny, digital cook – a culinary journey was projected onto the dinner table, with the chef muttering to himself as he pottered from France to China and back, following the footsteps of Marco Polo and creating a menu from the dishes he found along the way.
A large supporting cast in the shape of birds, boats and fire-breathing dragons helped to spice up the story.
“The meal could include Arabic cuisine, a touch of spice from India, sorbet from the Himalayas, and steamed sea bass and lobster dim sum from China before returning to France for dessert,” says Sebastian Krack, Park Hyatt Bangkok’s director of food and beverage.
“People love theatre, they love cinema, they love technology, and of course they love eating and drinking, so Le Petit Chef combined all of these. It’s fine dining, but it’s fun fine dining.”
