Expo 2020 Dubai: Your futuristic menu at Bompas & Parr will look like this

Is it a restaurant? Is it a theatre show? No, it's a genre-defying dining experience titled ‘The Future of Food: Epochal Banquet’ by London-based creative studio Bompas & Parr. At Expo 2020 Dubai, the foodie duo Sam Bompas and Harry Parr want artificial intelligence (AI) to host the visitors of the world fair at long banquet tables, where the food is as alien as the ambient setting.

As a multi-disciplinary studio, Bompas & Parr have honed their showmanship carefully over the past 14 years, creating unique experiences that are a lot like starring in your own adventure flick. For instance, the studio is known for inventing the lightest dessert the world has ever seen, and it is also behind the world's first glow-in-the-dark ramen shop. At Expo, the focus is on the future of food - all the culinary oddities we might find on our plates and how these can cushion the shock value.

For their Expo 2020 gig, Bompas & Parr is realising English scientist James Lovelock’s Novacene theory, one that predicts the cohabitation of humans with hyper-intelligent beings born of AI in the very near future. Though it might brush up on dystopian outcomes in good humour, the implications are more about food security and transgenic foods. Bompas calls it a "fire safety training" of sorts.

“We’re looking at future implications of transgenic [food]. Obviously, one of the great themes of Expo 2020 Dubai is the sustainability of our future planet,” he said. “One of the greatest challenges that humanity faces at the moment is food security. So, in the next 35 years we have to grow as much food as all of humanity has in its entire existence.”

A diner’s journey begins at the reception of The Universal Museum of Food set in the year 2321. You start off by trying what we already know, or perhaps not know, from our time on earth as hunter gatherers to space explorers. Expo's official site teases with mentions of levitating cakes and flavour-changing chips.

In three courses, diners are introduced to glowing foods, strange edibles, blooming hypernature and interpretation of Lovelock's Novacene worldview. According to Bompas, collaborations with AI can open up a realm of pure creativity, which visitors will witness in the menu whipped up by Chef Adam Filipek.

The three-course, two-hour experience took two years to develop with Expo 2020, and it is Bompas & Parr's biggest project yet - around 60 staff members are involved. Menu details are still under wraps for the grand opening on October 1, 2021.

To enter, diners must be 14 years old and above. The Future of Food: Epochal Banquet is housed in the Sustainability District, and each seating is priced from Dh550, offering lunch and dinner during the three performances it will stage per day. Read more: https://gn24.ae/c3bef0552df0000