Hawkee at Frasers Tower, Singapore

This place bills itself as "Singapore's First Automated Robotic Restaurant" (182 Cecil Street #02-01). But it was a lot less automated than it sounded. There were no kiosks to place your orders with: instead, two humans manned the front of the shop, taking orders the old fashioned way (cash only, I might add). They weren't using the array of numbered collection boxes along the walls either, as there was a guy there taking all of the food out of a single slot, verbally calling out order numbers, and then serving it to your table. And when I peered behind that slot, it looked like there were at least three other humans hustling away back there.

For a place that talked up its robots so much, there sure were a lot of humans. Indeed, when I came by last week during their stated operating hours, all of the lights were off: one of their employees told me that he didn't know when they would open because he didn't know when the rest of the staff would show up. From what I could see in a video that they played on the screens, these robots were merely enclosed cooking vessels rotating on an axis after a human loaded up the ingredients.

Now, I know that this is a bit unfair, as they are new, and surely they intentionally had so many staff to manage through both its operational growing pains as well as its own diners who are accustomed to a human touch. But at the end of the day, the food wasn't worth the effort either, as that Hokkien mee above was not the aromatic and savory plate that I was hoping for, even if the prawns were at least generously large and fresh (the ventilation in the place needs work too). I might come back to try their fried rice one day, but this otherwise wasn't the technological marvel that it was made up to be.