Three visions of the future home kitchen
I’m the resident sci-fi/fantasy nerd here in the Food + Home department. I grew up binging on shows like “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” “Firefly,” “Battlestar Galactica” and more recently, “Black Mirror” and “Westworld.” If I’m not scouring cookbooks, odds are you’ll find my nose buried in a book by Kim Stanley Robinson, Connie Willis or Octavia Butler.
So when the discussion about Future of Food came up, I decided to channel a bit of the “What if ?” spirit, imagining three future scenarios of a typical Sunday in a San Francisco home kitchen. How will technological advances impact how we think about and interact with food?
Future #1: Science dominates
Picture, if you will, a “Jetsons”like, super-shiny, gadget and convenience-heavy world where 3-D food printers, drone food delivery, laser dishwashers and other interactive, Web-connected smart appliances reign supreme.
7 a.m. The scent of freshly brewed coffee wakes you. In the kitchen, the Coffee Maestro, a home kitchen-friendly version of the now-ubiquitous Cafe X coffee robot, which debuted in San Francisco’s Metreon way back in 2017, has your latte waiting for you in your favorite mug. A ping on your smartphone notifies you that you’re running low on espresso beans and that the pea milk the Maestro uses to make your lattes will expire in two days. “Alexa, order more Blue Bottle espresso beans and vanilla Ripple,” you say. You’re in the mood for a special breakfast, so you mosey over to your 3-D food printer, set it to make a plate of pancakes, then take a seat at your smart kitchen table and scroll through the top stories in the all-digital San Francisco Chronicle.
Noon For lunch, you take a look at your wall-mounted hydroponic kitchen garden and select some fresh vegetables for a quick stir-fry. Your digital cutting board guides you on how to best slice and dice your veggies. When the
chopping’s done, you place the leftover scraps from your lunch prep into the compost, which uses a sophisticated system that helps power the garden. As the smart table also has induction coils under its surface, which allow you to cook directly on its surface, you grab your wok and head to the table to cook. Flavor-wise, you notice that the stir-fry is a little bland, but no worries. “Alexa, dispense ½ teaspoon salt,” you say. Who needs measuring spoons when your intelligent salt dispenser is more than happy to measure the perfect amount of seasoning. After lunch, you toss the dirty dishes in the laser dishwasher and place any lunch leftovers in your zero-energy gel-cooled refrigerator. 7 p.m. You decide to order delivery for dinner. Your Pegasus toast (the latest trend in toasted bread, which is topped with sky blue-tinted plantbased cream cheese and edible white, pink and silver glitter) arrives via delivery drone — along with the coffee beans and pea milk you ordered earlier this morning. Before digging into your delivered meal, you grab your food scanner to see exactly how many calories and carbs are in your dinner. Happily, there’s no need to do dishes because the containers that your meal came in are fully compostable. 10 p.m. You restock the Coffee Maestro so it’s ready for Monday morning, then head over to your Barmeo (a smart personal bartending device that has access to limitless cocktail recipes and can track your drink preferences), which whips you up a perfect rye manhattan. Raise a glass to technology.
Future #2: Dystopian kitchen
After joking one too many times about how robot overlords will one day rule the world, Silicon Valley-born artificial intelligence has, in fact, taken over. Instead of deeming humans obsolete and disposing of them like unwanted table scraps, the A.I. have (benevolently) implemented a highly structured system designed to help humans achieve peak efficiency as part of a global labor force. With increased efficiency, home cooking, solid foods and leisurely meal times are now a thing of the past. 7 a.m. Your internal alarm clock — a literal, nano-size digital alarm clock that’s been implanted in your skull — chirps, informing you it’s time to wake up. You roll out of bed and groggily shuffle into the fuel station (formerly known as the kitchen) of your cubiclesize SoMa micro-apartment. You place your thumb on the sensor pad of the Soylent3000, which after a quick analysis of your body chemistry, dispenses a plant-based smoothie containing vital protein, vitamins and nutrients — everything your body needs to start the day right. As the A.I. are aware that humans enjoy (the appearance of ) freedom of choice and variety, Soylent3000 smoothies come in a variety of flavor options to suit your personal tastes. As it’s breakfast time, you choose espresso-flavored. Noon It’s time for lunch, but it’s your day off and you don’t want to spend it indoors, so you get your turkey-bacon-club sandwich-flavored smoothie in a to-go cup and go for an energizing afternoon walk along the Embarcadero, which thanks to rising ocean levels now runs along Fremont and Battery streets. 7 p.m. You’ve worked up an appetite, so for dinner you opt for a steak dinner-flavored smoothie. 10 p.m. Feeling a little decadent, you decide you’d like a nightcap. The Soylent3000 has got you covered with its shotsize smoothie option, available in cocktail-inspired flavors like Irish coffee, brandy Alexander and white Russian. No alcohol is actually contained in these flavorings, as booze does not promote efficiency.
Future #3: Stay the course
Less dramatic than the previous scenarios, this future is actually not too different from present day — just a bit more polished, efficient and mindful. Frankly, to me this feels the most likely, as I maintain that aside from a few gadgets (a Vitamix, microwave, Kitchen Aid stand mixer and
Cuisinart food processor), my 2017 home kitchen isn’t all that different from what my grandmother’s was in 1957. Sure, gadgets and technological advances will continue to attempt to improve our lives, but for those who love to cook, sometimes you don’t need much more than a sharp knife, a sturdy wooden spoon and a well-seasoned cast-iron skillet.
7 a.m. You awake to the beeping of your gen 53 iPhone alarm and make your way to your solar-powered kitchen. Your coffee maker’s sensors note your movement and begins to brew a fresh cup of coffee. Upon opening the refrigerator door, the appliance lets you know that the cagefree eggs from the farmers’ market will go bad in a couple of days. That means frittata for breakfast, so you look up recipes on your smartphone and display them on your digital backsplash. Once the eggs and other ingredients have been mixed and added to your favorite oven-proof skillet, you open the door of your intelligent oven, which recognizes that you are baking a frittata; it sets the time and temperature. Your frittata looks so picture perfect, you snap a photo and share it with friends online. You place your dishes in the dishwasher, which uses a savvy drought-minded graywater system that helps irrigate your small backyard garden.
Noon You stop by your local farmers’ market to stock up on fresh produce for the week, which you’ll round out with an online order from Whole Amazon Foods, and maybe a meal kit or two to take the pressure off during the busy week ahead. You graze your way through the farmers’ market — sampling the crunchy, chilespiced crickets from that new edible insect farm near Davis that everyone’s been raving about, since mammal meat is now a rarity — so no need for lunch.
7 p.m. You sit down to a lovely bowl of pasta Bolognese. You made the sauce yesterday using lab-grown beef from I Can’t Believe It’s Not Meat and let it rest overnight to allow the flavors to deepen. The entire meal pairs nicely with that bottle of Anchorage Pinot Noir you bought from that winery in Alaska’s burgeoning wine country.
10 p.m. Unwind from a busy Sunday by making a cup of tea, Earl Grey, hot, which you’ll sip in bed while reading a new novel on your smartphone. As you leave the kitchen, the sensors note your departure and dim the lights. Goodnight, Kitchen.