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Dubai’s Woohoo Restaurant Is Powered By An LLM
Chef Aiman // Courtesy of Woohoo
A new sci-fi-themed restaurant in Dubai called Woohoo — created by restaurateur Ahmet Oytun Cakir’s Gastronaut Hospitality — has installed an AI as its head chef.
Why It Cooks: AI is coming to eat the world… and, apparently, cook what you eat too. Woohoo is part of a growing AI revolution in hospitality that’s treading the line between gimmick and innovation. Proof of the concept’s success will likely depend on the rate of returning customers.
Behind The Dishes: At Woohoo, if you want to speak with the chef, you’ll need to consult the chatbot.
The face of the restaurant is “Chef Aiman” — a custom-built AI chatbot developed using a culinary-focused LLM called UMAI that’s been “trained on thousands of recipes, flavor pairings, and food data,” per Bloomberg.
Chef Aiman doesn’t cook, but it does “analyze ingredients, generate unconventional flavor combinations, and write detailed recipes that human chefs in Woohoo’s kitchen then test.” And, yes, a human tastes everything and tweaks the recipe when necessary.
Its avatar was designed to have “broad global appeal” (it looks like “a middle-aged, Caucasian man with sleek silver goggles and a mysterious sci-fi allure”). It even appears in marketing, guests on podcasts, and, allegedly, vets job applicants.
The chatbot also curates the restaurant’s vibe, projecting AI-generated images of a future Dubai — all powered by a $1.1 million system that serves as the restaurant’s centerpiece.
Last Bite: So, moment of truth: how’s the food? Bloomberg reports that, despite the restaurant being pitched as the “future of dining,” most of the menu sticks to typical high-end, Asian-style crowd-pleasers. But there are also some wild offerings, including a dish called “Dinosaur Heart,” which is “tartare of chopped Angus beef tenderloin, Japanese pufferfish, and bluefin tuna belly, mounded on a rubber plate that slowly pulses, literally animating the dish.”
Next up: allegedly “3D-printed shawarmas and lab-grown meats.” The future is weird.
Next Meal: While Woohoo’s appeal is uncertain, the restaurant proves that Dubai seems to be transforming into the consumer-facing, experimental-tech capital of the world… which could continue to bolster tourism to the UAE.
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Polled and Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.