Restaurants of the future will cook up "mood food"

Chefs of the future could find customers cooking alongside them in the kitchen, with restaurants creating an ambience and serving up a menu to suit diners' different moods. According to creative design consultancy Pearlfisher, diners of the future will expect their restaurants to be a home from home. Its report, *A Taste of Things to Come*, says this could mean "cooking with the chef in the restaurant's kitchen and choosing whether to chink glasses at the dining table or slob out on cushions with friends in front of a TV." The study has been put together by a "superpanel" including Maddelena Bonnino, head chef at Mash Microbreweries and restaurants, Henry Harris, head chef at Hush, and Christian Arden, managing director of PoNaNa, the late-night bars group. "The restaurant is going to provide the setting and the backdrop. There may be zoned restaurants, with areas such as the chill-out eating area or the more upbeat, energetic area," said Jonathan Ford, creative partner at Pearlfisher and one of the authors of the report. At home, "intelligent" cookers will select ingredients, buy them online and then cook the meal, the report suggests. People would simply insert a recipe card and the raw ingredients and let the intelligent cooker do the rest. Celebrity chefs could pop up on a video screen to talk consumers through their recipes. At work, with the lunch break increasingly becoming a thing of the past, workers will be able to use their PC to heat up their food while they work. "It is highly likely that we may see some of the implications of this report coming true, but it could be within five days or the next five years," said Ford. But chefs were more sceptical about the ideas. Aldo Zilli, owner of London's Zilli Fish, said no restaurant would have kitchens large enough to cope with customers coming into the kitchen. "It will never work, there would be just too much mess," he said. Yet, the idea in itself was not completely fanciful. When he opened his restaurant he invited two customers a night to cook their meals and he also runs cookery classes. "I do think people in the future will be able to go into a restaurant and have Chinese, Indian, Pizza, Pasta or whatever it is they want," Zilli added. by Nic Paton