Edible Food Finds: Spyce
Photos by Michael Piazza
In the summer of 2018, a fast-casual restaurant called Spyce opened in Boston’s Downtown Crossing. The eatery, powered by a robotic kitchen, was—fittingly enough—the brainchild of a team of young engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a graduate student, Michael Farid realized that he was no longer on a college meal plan. The MIT alum was too busy to cook, but he couldn’t eat out every single night. This would be tough on both his budget and his health. So, along with three undergraduate friends from the institute’s water polo team, he worked to create a robot that could cook up rice bowls on demand.
When the prototype stir-fry robot began performing well, the quartet grew ambitious. They contacted chef Daniel Boulud of New York City, a renowned restaurateur. He tried the robot’s meal and decided to provide culinary expertise to the innovators. Soon, the team was in business.
Over months, as mechanized woks rustled up bowls of food for hungry customers downtown, the team saw myriad ways they could improve upon the original idea. They revamped the entire system. “We came up with Version 2.0 of Spyce Kitchen,” says Farid, CEO, and co-founder of Spyce.
The goal of the new “Infinite Kitchen” is to serve more customers, more personalized food, more efficiently. The name is an homage to the Infinite Corridor, the hallway that connects the main buildings on MIT campus. Besides, “infinite” hints at possibilities, the concept of choices galore.
An interactive menu, which enables customization, should appeal to those with food allergies or dietary restrictions, in particular. “Our setup allows us to isolate individual ingredients and craft a perfect, personalized meal,” says Executive Chef Jeff Tenner. “It is about offering alternatives, not just leaving things out.” The menu now features salads. You can also go half-and-half, filling your bowl with both grains and greens.
The old stir-fry woks at Spyce are gone. A super-steamer now cooks the grains, noodles or pasta; a carbon steel plancha sears meat and vegetables. Dressings and fresh sauces finish the dishes; toppings get added at the end of the line. The cook time for any order is three minutes, tops.
With the cooking system ensuring consistent results, ingredients are key to the quality of the meal. The chefs use local, seasonal and organic produce whenever possible. Spices drive the flavor in the globally inspired dishes, says Tenner. Dishes have names like The Bungalow, The Odyssey and The Big Biang.
In the prep kitchen at the back, cooks still prep food the traditional way. Compared to fast food, overall, the process of making healthy food is labor intensive, says Farid. “Automation is necessary to make healthy food accessible in a quick-service format.”
The futuristic front-end, whose workings are visible through a glass façade, is a clear draw. It provides the wow factor. Dining in will resume this summer. (Over the pandemic months, the eatery mostly did takeout. A fleet of electric mopeds delivered the food, served in compostable containers, to its city-wide customers.)
At the Harvard Square branch that opened in 2021, Tenner plans to serve spice-infused cocktails. Bartenders will mix drinks. At both outlets, staff greet you and are around if you need help.
Because few things say Boston more than a tasty meal prepared by an MIT-engineer-designed robotic kitchen, you might want to take out-of-town visitors there. Even a New Yorker—or two—might be impressed.
This story appeared in the Summer 2021 issue.
