Get ready, folks, your dinner in Dubai now might come with a code and a prompt. Yes, you heard me right. AI truly is taking the world by storm.
Dubai has always been a city of “firsts,” from the tallest tower, the most extravagant shopping malls, and the fastest police cars. And now? It’s home to the Middle East’s first restaurant operated by an AI chef.
WOOHOO, a restaurant that bills itself as “dining in the future,” is set to open in September in central Dubai, a stone’s throw from the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa.
Meet Chef Aiman: Dubai’s First AI Chef
Food at WOOHOO will be assembled by humans, for now. Still, everything else will be designed by a culinary language called “Chef Aiman.”
Aiman (a portmanteau of “AI” and “man”) is trained on decades of food science research, molecular composition data and over a thousand recipes from cooking traditions around the world, said Ahmet Oytun Cakir, one of WOOHOO’s founders.
Chef Aiman is an advanced AI system created by the tech-food company Gastronaut. It’s trained on thousands of recipes, scientific food data, and techniques from cuisines worldwide. Aiman is the ultimate food nerd and will never forget a single ingredient.
However, don’t worry, Chef Aiman isn’t tossing your salad or searing your steak itself. It’s more like the mastermind behind the scenes, coming up with new, creative, and surprisingly complex recipes. The actual cooking? That’s still handled by humans.
The model’s job is to break the cuisine down to its component parts like texture, acidity and umami. And then reassemble it into unusual flavour and ingredient combinations according to Aiman’s developers.
These prototypes are then refined by human cooks who taste the combinations and provide direction, in an effort led by renowned Dubai-based chef Reif Othman. The team gives feedback, which Aiman uses to learn and improve.
Will AI Replace Chefs?
Don’t worry, nothing beats the soul and heart that a human puts into a dish. And that’s exactly the point here.
Chef Aiman isn’t here to replace anyone. Instead, it’s designed to collaborate with chefs to push creative boundaries and help reduce kitchen stress.
Think of it as a high-tech sous-chef who never forgets, never tires, and always has a wild new idea up its sleeve.
The team behind it believes AI can help kitchens everywhere become more efficient, more sustainable, and more inspired. Eventually, the goal is to bring this tech to other restaurants around the world.
In a city known for pushing boundaries, this might just be Dubai’s boldest food experiment yet.
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