The next time you order a bowl of mala xiang guo, you might be telling your spice preference to a robot instead of a person. At Hawkee, located at Frasers Tower, robots are employed to prepare popular hawker dishes such as Hokkien mee ($6), char kway teow ($6), and seafood fried bee hoon ($6.90).
“We want to use robotic cooking and artificial intelligence to preserve the art of hawker culture and uphold the recipe,” shares the founder of EPIC Food and Beverage, Jeromel Gee. The company is responsible for assembling and engineering Robot DIANA, the automated cooking machines that prepare all the food at Hawkee.
Ordering is fuss-free: select your food and grab a seat to wait, or choose to watch the robot whip up your piping hot meal. There are a total of ten robots at the restaurant, and each is said to be able to prepare a dish in four to six minutes. The menu also includes mala xiang guo (from $8.90), Fu Zhou noodles ($7.90), and stir-fried black pepper beef with rice ($6.90) which is made in collaboration with chef Pung Lu Tin from Tasty Court Restaurant.
While the concept is fresh and forward-thinking, we're still on the fence about the food. Dishes like Hokkien mee and fried rice lacked the robustness and wok hei you would expect from hawker fare.