Imagine you walk into a restaurant. You are shown your seat, the server brings a menu, and along with it, a robot comes up to greet you.
The robot then points a camera at your face and tongue, analyses the texture and coating of what it sees, and hands you a personalised list of dishes tailored to your body’s apparent needs.
That is not all, though, as even in the kitchen behind you, most of the chefs doing the cooking are all robots as well.
This is not out of some science fiction movie or book, but it is actually happening. And it has kicked off one of the most interesting debates in food, technology, and privacy.
The Restaurant That Reads Your Tongue
When it comes to unusual and bizarre restaurants, there is no shortage of them. From themed ones that make diners eat inside a jail cell to inside coffins and more, to luxury ones that wrap everything in gold and have precious stones laid into the cutlery.
However, in Hangzhou, the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang, lies a restaurant called ’24 Jieqi Robot Restaurant’. The restaurant is located in the Xihu district of Hangzhou and is drawing large crowds and significant international attention.
The thing that sets this restaurant apart is its experimentation with automation and artificial intelligence (AI). The experiment is also evident in two of the restaurant’s largest areas, namely cooking and customer service.
The two-storey venue covers roughly 260 square metres and has a staff of around eight robots.
They stir-fry, boil noodles, brew coffee, make ice cream, deliver dishes, and clean the floor. According to reports, almost 60% of the kitchen workload is handled by these machines now.
But the most striking feature of this restaurant is at the door, where an AI “diagnosis robot” scans customers’ faces and tongues, then recommends dishes based on their complexion.
Before customers place orders, the robots perform an “AI analysis” by scanning their faces and tongues and asking them to complete a simple and short questionnaire.
The robots then create a report about the customer’s lifestyle, emotions and digestion status before recommending seasonal health-focused dishes.
Read More: ResearchED: Will India Soon See Sushi Being Served By Roadside Vendors As Street Food?
The concept is not a random tech novelty. It is rooted in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), which has used tongue and facial diagnosis for centuries, reading the colour, coating, and texture of the tongue as indicators of organ health, nutritional balance, and internal condition.
The concept applies TCM’s tongue and facial diagnostic principles, colour, texture, and appearance, indicating organ health and nutritional deficiencies, through machine learning to generate personalised meal recommendations in real time.
It is simultaneously the most technologically advanced and most culturally rooted restaurant concept currently operating.
Cai Haitang, the restaurant’s manager, explained that the kitchen is run mostly by robots, who are equipped to prepare over 100 dishes, including local delicacies such as Crab Roe Tofu, Three Cup Chicken, Pian Er Chuan noodles, and Braised Pork Trotters.
These robot chefs are trained on data collected from human chefs. This includes the ability to control heat and timing, to create dishes with consistent flavours each time.
The human staff, including chefs, are now free to supervise the ingredients, manage the kitchen, and further experiment with new recipes, something they were unable to do before.
Deng Xuhui, a chef at Madayunhe Community Canteen in the Gongshu District, speaking with Zhejiang TV, said that before, during peak hours, he was preparing dozens of dishes at once; however, now, “It saves half of my energy. So I can focus on checking the raw materials’ quality, inventing new cuisine and managing the kitchen.”
Zhu Qi, an engineer creating these cooking robots, explained the broader learning process behind the kitchen automation.
According to SCMP, he said that the robots store data on stove fire settings from the work of human chefs and also copy the chefs’ movements for stir-frying or spinning the pot.
One elderly diner, who visits the restaurant regularly, captured the experience succinctly, reportedly saying, “The dishes taste no different from that prepared by humans. They are not salty or oily. It is just what we senior citizens like.”
He further added that the introduction of these robots has led to the food in the restaurant becoming cheaper.
However, as compelling as the concept is, it sits squarely in the crosshairs of a rapidly intensifying global debate about biometric data collection.
The Jackson Lewis workplace privacy team, in their definitive Top 10 Privacy Issues for 2026 analysis, identified the core risk, commenting, “Biometric data collection continues to expand beyond fingerprints and facial recognition to include voiceprints, behavioral identifiers, and AI-derived biometric inferences. Litigation under Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) remains active, but risk is spreading through broader definitions of sensitive data in state privacy laws.”
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: Moneycontrol, NDTV, South China Morning Post
Find the blogger: @chirali_08
This post is tagged under: Restaurant, Restaurant trends, food trends, food, food news, AI Restaurant, chinese AI Restaurant, ai, robot
Disclaimer: We do not own any rights or copyrights to the images used; these images have been sourced from Google. If you require credits or wish to request removal, please contact us via email.
Other Recommendations:
It’s 2026 And Hotels/Supermarkets Still Throw Unused Food Away Than Give It To The Poor
