Hey Hive!
Now that it's been quite a while since Singapore has has been out of lockdown, or what our government has termed "circuit breaker", restaurants have been operating pretty much as usual aside from implementing safe distancing measures. We've also been eating out more and trying new places!
And one of these new places is this food court called FoodFare!
Well technically, FoodFare is a food conglomerate dealing in eateries like food courts and coffee shops, but also food manufacturing and catering. It is also one of the arms of NTUC, a social enterprise in Singapore which owns a few large entities, including the biggest supermarket chain in Singapore - Fairprice. FoodFare was setup in 1995 provide our customers with a greater choice of value-for-money, healthy and tasty meals!
Anyway, this particular Foodfare in a mall called Ang Mo Kio Hub has a very special stall which has a Robo Chef!
Called Robo Chef @ Fried Rice, their menu mainly consists of fried rice with different types of toppings and meat, such as salted fish, sambal petai shrimp, chicken luncheon meat, black pepper beef/chicken, etc. The stall looks quite typical on the outside, but there's a secret! The chef behind their aromatic fried rice is actually a robot - or more specifically a robot arm!
Source: zaobao
I couldn't take a video of it unfortunately, but I did find a video of it on youtube!
Basically, the wok has a robot arm attached to it that does the tossing, while the humans working behind the counter throw ingredients into the wok!
It's actually quite simplistic, but a useful everyday application for a robot arm. At least you know the arm won't ever get tired and you'll get perfect tossing and wok hei (aka breath of wok, which imbibes the rice with flavour) every time!
But I guess the big question is, how is the food?
The presentation might've been a little lackluster imo, but the food itself tasted pretty good! Sean ordered the chicken luncheon meat fried rice while I got the black pepper chicken. And Sean added a fried egg for me!
It tasted good, but it's not exactly something I would go out of my way for, if you know what I mean. It was alright, but it's not exactly spectacular. I mean, it's just fried rice, but still yummy.
I liked that it wasn't too oily though, which I think is part of the FoodFare mission. Because all the Foodfare food stalls are required to use healthier cooking oil and offer at least one Healthier Choice item each to ensure that they really adhere to providing healthy meals. I also liked that they added vegetables in the rice too because you definitely don't get enough vegetables in other fried rice hawker stalls.
But I think my black pepper chicken could definitely have used some more black pepper. It felt a tad under-seasoned to me. The chili helped though, so that's good.
Overall, I'd say this is a very interesting concept, and I'm glad they're still doing well. It's definitely a cool use of robotics but they have to work on plating better for sure.
I read about another place that uses robot chefs to cook fried rice called Bowl & Bowl, and the restaurant itself has a nice aesthetic as well. We've yet to visit it but when we do, I'll definitely share it here as well!
Thanks for reading!
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When the aroma touches the soul, nothing else is needed...
indeed! How poetic; very well put!
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How interesting @ taco.cat! It is impressive how the human presence is replaced by a robot, which I consider has its advantages in times of pandemic, because infections are reduced. The food in general looks great. The chicken is crispy, maybe not as spicy as you wanted it to be, but it does look delicious. I really like fried rice, although sometimes in the food establishments I have been to, they exceed the use of oil or use a low-quality one. I found it interesting that you shared with all of us this curious expression of modern automated gastronomy. A great greeting.
¡Que interesante @taco.cat! Es impresionante como la presencia humana es sustituida por un robot,lo cual considero tiene sus ventajas en tiempos de pandemia, debido a que se reducen los contagios. La comida en general se ve buenísima. El pollo se nota que está crujiente, quizá no tan especiado y picante como querías que estuviese, pero tiene un aspecto delicioso. A mí me gusta mucho el arroz frito, aunque a veces en los locales de comida a los que he ido, se exceden en el uso del aceite o utilizan uno de baja calidad. Me pareció interesante que compartieses con todos nosotros esta curiosa expresión de la gastronomía moderna automatizada. Un gran saludo.
thanks so much @sirenahippie! Glad you enjoyed it! It definitely is a very interesting and useful application of automation. Yes fried rice is one of my go-to rice dishes and I'm glad this robot chef didn't use too much oil!
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