The Future of Food Is Likely Not in an Oculus Headset
What role can or should VR play in food?
Spillage was my biggest concern leading up to my first virtual reality dinner. I’d read horror stories of headset-clad guests at other VR events, some of whom had paid thousands of dollars for the privilege, missing their mouths entirely and dropping food across their clavicles instead. VR dinners don’t come around every day, and I fretted wildly about acquiring a case of butterfingers as I sat in the lobby of the historic James Beard House in New York last month awaiting entrance to Aerobanquets RMX.
Aerobanquets is a collaboration between Italian artist Mattia Casalegno and chef Chintan Pandya and restaurateur Roni Mazumdar of the Rahi and Adda restaurants in New York. It involves eating while wearing a headset that takes you into an alternate dimension inspired by 1932’s “Futurist Cookbook,” a seminal avant-garde Italian text that served as a manifesto for Futurist ideology. Virtual renderings connected to each course (“bite” might be more accurate) are projected into 3-D augmented reality objects while you eat, and the accompanying video is narrated by Gail Simmons of “Top Chef.” They’re positioning the event as part art exhibit, part meal, and part video game; the three-month run at the James Beard House this winter is first time Aerobanquets has been…
