CUTTING-EDGE CUISINE

Food trends to note in the year ahead.

01 ROBOT WAITERS

Subservient AI may be the precursor to a robot uprising, but in the meantime, restaurants are experimenting with staffers who won’t call in sick on a whim. San Francisco’s Cafe X uses robotic baristas to fulfil coffee orders. Spice World, a quirky Sichuan hotpot restaurant in Sydney, uses robot waiters. Most notably, a temporary cafe in Tokyo last month featured robot waiters controlled by people with debilitating diseases.

02 MOTHERLESS MEAT

There still isn’t enough evidence to prove lab-grown meat is going to be economically or environmentally sustainable, but the growing demand for cruelty-free meat is keeping scientists busy regardless. Life3 Biotech, a Singaporean food tech start-up, is currently seeking funding to develop a plant-based protein it calls “Veego”.

03 FERMENTATION

Fermentation has lots of benefits, such as preservation and adding probiotics to our diet. It’s also the reason we have soya sauce, kimchi, beer, chocolate, and countless other delicious things. Interest in the ancient process is growing. Singapore was even home to the first fermentation festival in Asia last year with Funk’d Fest, hosting homebrew competitions for beer and kombucha. Local start-up Craft & Culture was launched to mixed reactions in 2015, but now sells thousands of bottles of its homemade kombucha and milk kefir every month.