America's First Restaurant With A Completely Robot-Staffed Kitchen Just Opened In Boston

As robots continue to snake their way into the human workforce, Massachusetts is welcoming its newest high-tech hires. With their engineering degrees and backing from famous Michelin-starred chef Daniel Boulud, MIT graduates Michael Farid, Kale Rogers, Luke Schlueter, and Brady Knight have opened Spyce on Washington Street in Boston with a predominantly non-living staff.

Customers will order food via touchscreen computer. Then, one of the seven robotic woks in the kitchen takes over and cooks each meal in three minutes or less. The restaurant has only three human employees working at a time. Two of them garnish and deliver bowls to diners, and one is simply on standby to guide guests through the ordering process, GrubStreet reports.

Boulud, who owns seven restaurants in New York City and six elsewhere, has invested in Spyce and is also the restaurant's culinary director. The 63-year-old French chef recounts on the company site that he heard about Spyce after Farid, Rogers, Schlueter, and Night guessed his email address and sent him a video of the kitchen prototype they'd built in the basement of their fraternity house.

"[Fast food] should be fast and casual with a sense of health, locality, and ethnicity at a good price," Boulud told The Daily Meal in an email. "The best example of this would be Spyce in Boston, which reflects a new generation of fast casual."

So, what's on the menu? Executive chef Sam Benson, who worked for Boulud at Café Boulud in New York City's Upper East Side, curated a menu of customizable bowls. Each one costs $7.50 and is available with meat or in vegetarian, pescatarian, gluten-free, and vegan versions. There's only one Spyce as of now, so if you're outside of Beantown and itching for high-tech eats, you might have to hit up Marty the cute googly-eyed robot for the 15 healthiest frozen dinners.