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The looks of the inconspicuous building hosting CloudChef, located in Palo Alto’s industrial zone, certainly doesn’t disclose what happens on site. Upon entering, the facility outfitted with steel counters, numerous shelves and weighing stations, still gives away very little – this could be a lab or a manufacturing plant. And yet, according to CloudChef co-founder and CEO Nikhil Abraham, the intricate array of devices and monitors is, in fact, the culinary future.
CloudChef, launched earlier this year, offers a complex premise you might need to chew on – in the Palo Alto kitchen Abraham and his partners, Mohit Shah and Atish Aloor, have built, any recipe by a fine-dining chef can be broken down to the simplest, most technical steps, and recreated without their involvement, using various tech sensors. On location, to help the machines, is hired personnel without any formal cooking training, whose job is to get the dishes ready for delivery. Currently, CloudChef works with delivery platforms like Doordash – most food comes hot and ready to eat. Occasionally, a dish will have plating instructions, but not normally.
If this sounds ambitious enough already, wait until you hear the vision – to allow food lovers to taste recipes from Michelin-level restaurants from all over the world, without leaving the house.
Nikhil Abraham and Mohit Shah
The idea was born when Abraham, no starter to the start-up mindset, moved to the US from Mumbai in 2017. Looking for an authentic taste of India in the Bay Area, Abraham couldn’t find certain dishes he was craving. Talking to transplant friends from other countries like Vietnam, he heard similar sentiments. Then he thought: “If robots knew how to cook, we would all be able to eat whatever we want whenever we want,” he says. Even more thrilling was the realisation that came right after: “What's most valuable is the ability to cook any recipe anywhere in a contextless manner.”
In CloudChef’s world, this meant collecting recipes from Indian chefs whose work Abraham admires and asking them to prepare the dishes. Then, it was all about dividing the preparation process into small steps that can be codified into data points such as temperature, colour and texture, and controlled using cameras and infra-red sensors that detect nuances and guide the preparation.
Chicken ghee roast from Ettan
For example, when sautéing onions, the pan lets the cook know when a desired temperature has been achieved, while the camera can assess the preparedness level. Or, when reducing a sauce, a weight sensor helps to identify when enough of the sauce has evaporated. Each station and stage of the recipe lists the exact ingredients needed to proceed – and the prep team stocks them, in clear labelled vessels, in the different sections of the kitchen. “The equipment only looks expensive, but we actually use pans we bought on Amazon and affordable sensors, to supercharge a standard kitchen,” says Abraham, trying to demystify the operation. While some might argue that exquisite food requires speciality equipment and pricy pans and pots, Abraham says, “the proof is in the pudding,” as even the chefs who have contributed recipes to the platform can’t tell the machine-aided dishes from their own.
While the technical side of things still might sound elaborate, there’s simplicity in the financial model; chefs have to demo the desired recipe only once – and then sit back and relax as they get royalties from every order, anywhere between 3% and 15%, according to Abraham. The approach behind this model is viewing recipes as creative entities similar to songs or artwork.
The kitchen at CloudChef in Palo Alto
All of this, so diners in Silicon Valley can order the famous chicken biryani from Aminia, one of Kolkata’s most beloved restaurants, or an avocado papdi chaat by Thomas Zacharias, a well-known ambassador for Indian cuisine, formerly of Indian sensation The Bombay Canteen. Or, in CloudChef’s second location in Mumbai, those hungry for lunch can order a ghee chicken roast by chef Srijith (Sri) Gopinathan of Palo Alto’s own Michelin-recognised fine-dining establishment, Ettan. Other cuisines are in the works too – a Michelin-star restaurant from Singapore in the process of signing with the platform, as well as restaurants in London and NYC. While Abraham can’t yet disclose some of the names in the works, he assures that eventually, CloudChef will offer “everything from soups and dumplings to pasta and risotto and progressive Peruvian.”
About an hour away from CloudChef’s kitchen, in Oakland, Saúl Valdés, the Executive Chef of Parche, a new Colombian restaurant that was recently included in the Michelin guide, is both intrigued and conflicted about the premise. Could he envision offering Parche’s colourful ceviche plates and intricate stews to the masses, in such tech-driven fashion? “Technology is incredible, and I absolutely believe a recipe can be replicated this way,” says Valdés, “but the flavours will not always be consistent, because the product isn’t always consistent; sometimes mushrooms in different seasons have more water than others, when you reduce them it’s a lot about the sensation, and their smell.” In other words, says Valdés, “it can look the same – but will it always taste the same?”
Rasmalai tres leches by chef Akshay Purohit
Chef Sri Gopinathan, who was one of the first Bay Area figures to collaborate with CloudChef, believes the answer is yes. Well-known locally he has had his hand in many innovative projects – including Mamu, a mushroom-based meat alternative he’s been utilising in his new San Francisco restaurant, Copra. When approached by CloudChef, he immediately expressed interest. “I completely believe in this technology, at least for now,” he says. Gopinathan has been helping CloudChef for over a year, deconstructing recipes and trying the system out. “The sheer fact the technology was able to replicate my recipes, given my experience in cooking, made me believe it. I think AI for food is going to be one of the big next things.”
Abraham is quick to admit that the model has its limitations: “We’re ideally trying to stay away from dishes in which plating is really important and there are fine motor skills involved, as well from recipes that are extremely ingredient-driven, like sushi,” he says. “But we are able to cover many types of popular cuisines.”
For those in metropolitan areas abundant with restaurants representing different national cuisines, CloudChef’s mission might sound a little redundant – or at least indulgent – but, as Abraham plans the brand’s expansion into other locations in the US and beyond, he’s mindful of the world's culinary map and its blindspots. San Francisco’s bounty is different to that available in a London suburb, and New York isn’t Munich, where diners might be excited to try something different – even if the atmosphere of the restaurant that originally created the dish doesn’t come with the delivery. Besides, even if you’re spoiled on a daily basis by some of the best restaurants in the city, he says, there’s the lurking FOMO: “If you think about the best meals you've had in your life, it's usually not from the restaurants around you. The greatest foods aren’t near you – but you can have the world’s best creators compete for your dinner table.” Destination restaurants watch out.
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