Augmented reality culinary theatre experience Le Petit Chef coming to Calgary

Le Petit Chef, the worldwide culinary theatre experience that uses augmented reality to bring dishes to life and has been featured at numerous luxury hotels and on high-end cruise ships, is coming to Calgary’s Dorian Hotel.

The premise of Le Petit Chef is that a six-inch tall chef along with his assistant prepares the evening’s meals in sometimes silly, sometimes comedic, but always entertaining ways.

That preparation is projected via video onto the diner’s table and plates, which is then replaced when its time to eat, with careful recreations by real chefs matching the dishes.

The journey of the world’s smallest virtual chef and his madcap team to the Dorion’s Bistro Novelle was a very personal one, owing directly to the hotel’s new General Manager, Ian Jones.

“I’ve had the luxury of working around the world at hotels, and a friend of mine was the GM of a Hilton in Bristol, and she rolled it out—I was very intrigued,” he said.

That interest prompted Jones to bring the concept to his previous hotel appointment at the Victoria Marriott Inner Harbour, where his team transformed a 16-person dining room into the full theatrical experience.

“It was just an instant success, people loved it. But just before I left, we also started launching special days for seniors… and they absolutely loved it. They all had their own phones out, videotaping it and saying, ‘oh, my grandson would like it or my granddaughter would like it,’” Jones said.

The theatrical experience, he said, was a perfect fit for the Bistro Novelle’s larger dining capacity, and also serves a way to activate the restaurant during the evening outside of it’s breakfast and lunch operating hours.

A unique combination of sensations

Lloyd Summers, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Calgary based virtual reality game and content firm Red Iron Labs, called Le Petit Chef coming to Calgary “brilliant.”

“When it comes to food, we lead with our eyes sometimes. So, I think having something very visual that it’s entertaining, that’s enticing you with the smell of the food, it’s just a very interesting combination to get somebody excited,” Summers said.

“The big advantage is it’s a very interesting way to do storytelling. I think it’s easy to forget that eating, especially a restaurant, can be an entertainment experience.”

He likened it to one part show, one part food, but said that the combination of both created something that is wholly unique for diners, but with precedence in the augmented reality space.

“At DaVinci, they had a really interesting setup with using immersive technology so that you see what the art would look like in different forms. It all comes down to new ways of telling stories and sharing things.”

Jones used the examples of the chef constantly getting into hijinks like knocking over candles or falling off icebergs as a way Le Petit Chef engages in storytelling.

“You get to enjoy all the normal aspects that you would about dining, the visual sense of the plate, the smell of the food and the taste of the food, and then with your friends there you get to share some of the jokes and laughter that you experience from the little chef,” he said.

For Summers, the use of augmented reality, not just with Le Petit Chef, is an effective tool to build community and connections.

“When you go through some kind of unique or interesting experience, it gives you a chance to share with somebody else and see what they think and if they were moved or interested, or how they felt about it,” he said.

Theatre makes dining more social

Jones said that one of the things that he noticed in Victoria, was how Le Petit Chef connects diners of all ages—from the youngest children ready to take their first forays into fine dining, right up to senior citizens.

“The centre round plate in front of you is where the action is, and where the [Le Petit Chef] is preparing his meal, but if you look off to the right of your plates, or the top of the table, there could be a butterfly flying across, there could be a bird going across, there could be ocean waves moving back and forth,” he said.

“I’ve seen children standing up and trying to catch a butterfly and how they see different things than adults see.”

Jones said, that in his experience guests that might be on their phones at other restaurants aren’t during a showing of Le Petit Chef.

“It saddens me sometimes to look at a table of two people going out for dinner and both of them have their heads in their phone, and we forgot to connect with the people in front of us,” he said.

“The one thing that Le Petit Chef has done is it has taken the show to the table, and made the whole dining experience an immersive experience for two hours. You kind of look up when the lights go off, and you think, ‘oh, my God, I’ve been here for two hours.” You’ve laughed with people, you’ve talked to people, you’ve enjoyed great food, and you’ve been entertained.”

That’s something that has been noted by academic researches looking into the effects of augmented and virtual reality experiences in the dining room as a way to enhance the dining experience.

A 2021 study from researcher and professor of marketing Dr. Wided Batat from the University of Lyon in Paris, published in the journal Technological Forecasting and Social Change, noted that effect on patrons.

Writing in How augmented reality (AR) is transforming the restaurant sector: Investigating the impact of “Le Petit Chef” on customers’ dining experiences, Dr. Batat wrote that “the AR dining experience had a positive impact because it was perceived as an ice-breaker activity that facilitated social interactions among customers dining with one another well as their interactions with other customers and staff.”

“Likewise, the interaction with the content, especially the storytelling and the character displayed in the 3D video positively affected the extent to which customers enjoyed their physical dining experiences. This is because participants enjoyed the direct effects of the animation from the image and the sound as well as the indirect effects, such as stimulated taste, smell, and touch the experience generated.”

Like all theatre, the experience is in the details

As a company, Le Petit Chef provides restauranteurs a choice of seven pre-set augmented reality videos to be projected onto tables, along with accompanying forms of food.

Jones said that the challenge is to match what is projected in the video with what chefs are creating in kitchen to match.

“Before we launched it in Victoria, I went to a couple other Le Petit Chef locations in Canada—one in Vancouver, one in Toronto—and what What disappointed me about both of those locations was, I guess, their lack of effort to try and mimic what was on the plate,” he said.

“The first course was a tomato burrata salad, and that’s a slice of tomato, burrata cheese and basil leaves and drizzled with olive oil and vinegar. I got a garden salad served to me like a banquet salad, and I thought, ‘well, that looks nothing like it.’”

Echoing those difficulties, Summers said that one of the barriers to restaurants adopting augmented reality is both the cost and complexity of that entertainment form.

“Technology is always a barrier. Not just for the users, but not all restaurants have access to funding or opportunities to build something that’s different and creative,” he said.

“It’s a very difficult industry to make innovation in unless you’re being very creative and courageous. And I think that’s the big thing is having the courage to try to mix the technology and the food.”

Jones said that building the right immersive experience means working with a culinary team that understands the small details about what takes the theatrical component and brings it into reality on the plate.

“We have the videos, we can see exactly what the dish looks like, and we want to mimic it as close as we can. There’s one dessert where the chef walks across the plate, steps in some chocolate, and you see his chocolate footprint on this side of the plate,” he said.

“We actually will take a food-safe Q-tip, where we would dip it in the chocolate and mimic the same thing. It just makes it so much more impactful that the video goes off, and the exact plate that we were just showing appears in front of you.”

On the food side, he said that the Dorian’s Executive Chef Joshua Dyer has a great deal of freedom to create the flavour profile of each of the dishes profiled in the augmented reality experience.

“That’s really where they come in. Because, you know, I at home with a barbecue and some potatoes, I could make my dishes look like that, but I guarantee it will taste anything like what what our chefs put together. It’s in their marinade, it’s in their seasoning, it’s in how they prepare their vegetables, and the same with the Crème Brulée,” he said.

“There’s still a tremendous amount on on the culinary team to finish off the show and make it wonderful all the way.”

Experience here to stay

Jones said that the experience launches on Feb. 10, and will run every week Wednesday through Sunday for a single sitting. He encourages people to treat it like a theatre experience.

“So, like just like a theatre you would arrive early, and you can appreciate a drink while waiting in the outside of the theatre, and the same thing will happen here,” he said.

“You’ll wait outside of the restaurant, and then we’ll pull back the curtains and you will be brought to your seat. The room is set up with tables of four tables or two, and then we have one table of eight.”

Owing to the pre-set format of the experience, diners looking to sit in odd numbered groups may not be able to all sit at the same table, said Jones, as the video projections are set up just for the tables of two, four and eight.

Getting the most out of the Le Petit Chef experience, said Summers, was to go into it with an open mind expecting something more like a show than a traditional meal.

“I think the most powerful way to experience it is kind of like the theatre, because then it becomes an experience that’s meaningful to you and it stays a lot longer,” he said.

“Really going into it, if you want to prepare ahead of time for other augmented reality experiences, there’s other experiences like painting an AR, or learning about your city and AR. It’s just a way to hold up your phone and see something nobody else can see—your own private little world that you get to look in for a while, that you may or may not be sharing with other people.”

For more details on Le Petit Chef at the Dorian, and for reservations in February, see lepetitchef.com/Calgary.