What If A Robot Made You Lunch? Now In Boston They Do At Spyce

BOSTON, MA — The robots are here. And they're making lunch now.

A new restaurant in the heart of downtown Boston featuring a robotic kitchen whose concept comes from an automated restaurant in one of the dining halls at MIT opened Thursday complete with a band playing out front.

The folks behind Spyce say they've created the world’s first restaurant featuring a robotic kitchen that cooks complex meals in response to a problem they said they faced themselves; being priced out of wholesome and delicious food that cost less than $10.

"It's going well," said Brady Knight one of the co-owners of the place Tuesday afternoon. The small fast casual restaurant on Washington Street, which is home also to a slue of popular healthy fast casuals like B.Good and right around the corner from Clover, was hopping even at 2:30 p.m. as people placed their orders on tablets and waited as the robots did their work, turned over rice bowls to two humans who added toppings put a specialized lid with a name tag on it and voila. Robot food. Well, human food, made mainly by robots.

"We were a little too busy to cook every single night and couldn't quite afford eating out so we said why don't we see if we can make a robot that could do it for us, and three years and some change later we kind of transformed into this restaurant," said one of the co-owners.

The four started out as hungry MIT students and water polo teammates tired of spending $10 on take-out lunches and dinners. So Kale Rogers, Michael Farid, Brady Knight and Luke Schlueter.

"Our athletic appetites required better nutrition but our student budgets didn’t allow for that kind of expense. While we ate our bland chopped salads and stir-frys, we dreamed of an alternative: a robot that cooked tasty and nutritious meals, served them, and cleaned up after," said the quartet in a statement online.

"We were all robotics-obsessed engineers, so we quit yapping and built one in our fraternity basement," reads a post on their website.

The four MIT graduates (who now call themselves the "Spyce Boys") came up with the idea that runs independently from humans except for the restocking of ingredients and the garnish and name tagging part.

Co-founder and CEO Michael Farid, along with Culinary Director Daniel Boulud of the Back Bay's Bar Boulud, are highlighted in an Instagram video released today that shows a row of tablets where the machines take your order then process it in a Jetsons-like manner.

Boulud, who himself knows a thing or two about food (read: He's known for his multitude of Michelin stars and James Beard accolades), said he was impressed when he saw the video the Spyce Boys sent him.

"So, in addition to becoming an investor, I accepted the position of Culinary Director, and invited Chef Sam Benson, who had worked for me at Café Boulud, to take on the Executive Chef role,” he said in a statement.

The restaurant specializes in seven versions of rice bowls, each customizable to suit vegetarians, vegan and those who go gluten free.

A Garde Manger (pronounced gar-mahn-jey) who is human applies the finishing touches in an effort to make the food look a little more pretty than it's just been shaken by a robot in a pot. There are two people behind the counter working on that job and one person stands watch near the register to take cash should people be so old school in this Jetsons era to need that.

(Take a look below at the tour via Boston Patch's Facebook page)

Check out the tour:

Hours? 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Every day

Photo credit: Chris Sanchez, courtesy Spyce.