Meet your new chef? Robot cook is ready with a risotto

Robotic arm is programmed to make hundreds of recipes planned by professional chefs

It fries onions, pours in vegetable stock, stirs risotto rice and even taps a spatula on the side of a saucepan like any amateur cook might do while humming a tune or listening to a kitchen radio.

But this robot chef is working with scientific precision – cooking a Milanese risotto will take 52 minutes and eight seconds, no more and no less – and is meant to do away with human error.

Invented by Russian computer scientist Mark Oleynik, it is about to go on the market as a labour-saving device for busy homeowners, commercial kitchens, hotels, airlines and retirement homes.

It is priced in the same range as a luxury kitchen, roughly £50,000 ($63,100), and has tongs, a spatula, an induction hob and containers full of food stationed around its single robotic arm.

A sous-chef, or hungry owner, needs to fill the containers with chopped ingredients, then use an iPad to select from a menu of hundreds of recipes written and tested by professional cooks.

Then you press start, and the Moley Robotics machine (the company is named after Mr Oleynik) whirrs into action.

“This machine can help you to recreate a dish from a professional chef any time you need, in the place where you live or where you work,” Mr Oleynik told The National at a London showroom due to open in autumn.

A version of the robot was displayed at Dubai’s Gitex technology fair in 2020.

The model going on sale is a compact, minimalist unit known as the Chef’s Table. Moley is also making bigger domestic kitchens that can be customised with marble panelling.

A robotic arm preparing a risotto at a London showroom. Photo: The National

The robo-repertoire includes pasta dishes, paella, risotto, seafood, omelettes, soups, steaks and stews. Tokyo’s famous chefs can relax for now – the robot has yet to master sushi.

You can use it as a normal hob if you want to try making the recipe yourself.

If you turn to the robot, it will pick up utensils with its single arm and get to work on its list of instructions, which you can follow on the screen.

It stirs, waits a little, stirs again then scrapes off the spatula and puts it away. Even the pepper grinder makes a robotic buzz.

The dishes have been fine-tuned down to the minute and second by real-life chefs including an Italian cook who masterminded the risotto. The showroom’s bin was full of omelettes as the robot perfected frying beaten eggs.

Mr Oleynik is no Michelin star chef himself but believes there is a gap in the market for freshly cooked food that does not take up “52 minutes of your life” or force people to compromise on quality.

“I want to have a freshly cooked meal any time, when I wake up, late evening, night-time, daytime,” said Mr Oleynik, who said the wealthy customer might not want a private chef in their home.

“I hate delivery because delivery food is not very good quality. By the time it’s coming, the time of the delivery, the taste is gone. I like good food so I need to go to a good restaurant, but it’s not just behind your door and there is only lunchtime and dinnertime so you’re not flexible.”

Inventor Mark Oleynik has been developing the robot since 2014. Photo: The National

In commercial kitchens, Mr Oleynik makes no secret of the fact that the robot could take away jobs.

But it is being billed as a willing volunteer for antisocial night shifts, not least at a time of labour shortages in Europe.

“I don’t really see the chef who wants to sit during the night and wait for an order from room service,” Mr Oleynik said.

If the product sells, production scales up and the price falls, he would like the technology to be sold around the world, including in the Middle East.

“Everybody understands that to have the best-quality dish, it needs to be freshly prepared just before you eat,” he said.

“You extend the ability of your kitchen. You can still cook by yourself, no limitation. But if you don’t have time, you don’t have patience or you don’t have knowledge how to cook, the machine can help you.”