Credit: Food Ink

Our philosophy is to create a place where people can think about the future and consider how it’s affecting our lives
– Antony Dobrzensky

Diners across the world will soon be able to eat 3D printed food using 3D printed utensils in a pop-up restaurant filled with 3D printed furniture.

Food Ink is a new restaurant concept created by a collective of architects, artists, chefs, designers, engineers and inventors.

The first pop-up recently launched in Venlo, Holland, and one will debut outside a brewery in Shoreditch, London from 25-27 July. A nine-course dinner will be 3D-printed live to guests by an international team of cooks, artists and technologists including chefs Mateu Blanch and Michelin-starred elBulli veteran Joel Castanye. The pair currently run the kitchen at La Boscana in Bellvis, Spain.

Food Ink’s meals are produced using a multi-material 3D printer that can print a huge range of ingredients, from chocolate to goat’s cheese and pizza dough. These are made into a paste before being fed into the machine in much the same way an ink cartridge would be. Very thin layers of the paste are then built up and fused together to form a solid object, which can be eaten.

Dutch 3D printing innovators byFlow are founding partners of the restaurant, alongside businessmen Antony Dobrzensky and Marcio Barradas, who developed the concept.

Tables, chairs and lamps in the restaurant are are all 3D printed, and were designed by architect Arthur Mamou-Mani, a protégé of Zaha Hadid. Polish artist Iwona Lisiecka created the utensils, and a team of filmmakers have made original visual projections and music to be displayed in the restaurant.

“Our goal is to work with the best designers and chefs to create nutritious, delicious and healthy food and an amazing multi-sensory experience,” Dobrzensky told CLAD. “With the pop-up, we want to announce to the world that this concept is now viable, get people excited and hopefully grow the concept into a scalable business. It’s a much better way than sitting in a boardroom in a suit making a boring pitch.

“The technology is still first generation and given the speed of development I’ve seen, in about four years this type of 3D printing will be everywhere. ”

Future planned venues for Food Ink include Berlin, Dubai, Seoul, Rome, Las Vegas, Tokyo, Sydney and Reykjavik. The restaurant’s founders hope these events will draw the attention of investors, allowing them to create a viable brand and a chain of permanent Food Ink restaurants that catch the imagination in the same way as ice bars or dining in the dark.

“We’re all aware that the amount of technology around us and the speed with which it changes is accelerating,” Dobrzensky said. “It’s very exciting and empowering but also a bit disorienting and alarming for a number of people. A big part of our philosophy is to have a place where people can come and think about the future, have a conversation about it, and consider how it’s affecting our lives. We want to create a positive environment to get people thinking about some of the difficult issues we’ll have to navigate in order to sustainably move into the future.

“The restaurant design is intended to show the present and the future blurring and dissolving in our midst, just as science fiction and reality often blurs. We’re trying to provide, quite literally, a taste of the future.”

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FEATURE: Technology – 3D printing