By Alimat Aliyeva

At Gastronaut Hospitality's Woohoo restaurant in Dubai, UAE,dishes are crafted by AI Chef Ayman, an artificial intelligencesystem trained on thousands of recipes and flavor combinations.Opened in September 2025, Woohoo positions itself as a glimpse intothe “future of gastronomy”,Azernews reports.

The concept began when the restaurant’s owner, Akhmet OytunCakir, faced a creative block in the kitchen and decided toexperiment with ChatGPT to develop a new dish. He asked the AI tosuggest a recipe, and it recommended spiced mutton. “It wasincredible—just incredible. We immediately photographed it andadded it to the menu. It became an instant bestseller,” Cakirrecalls.

AI Chef Ayman is an avatar built on the Umai model developed byVivid Studios in the UAE. He resembles a middle-aged man withglasses and a futuristic aesthetic, and he “runs” the kitchen usinginsights from a massive database of recipes, ingredients, andflavor pairings. The AI can invent dishes by combining ingredientsin unconventional ways, creating unique flavor profiles that mightnever occur to human chefs.

Woohoo is more than a restaurant; it’s an experimental lab forAI-driven gastronomy. Chef Ayman can adapt recipes in real timebased on diners’ preferences, dietary restrictions, or seasonalingredients. The restaurant has even started hosting interactivetasting sessions, where guests can watch the AI design a dish onthe spot and then taste it minutes later.

This approach hints at a future where AI not only supports chefsbut may also reshape culinary creativity, offering endlesspossibilities for experimentation, flavor exploration, andinnovation in the restaurant industry.

Some regulars jokingly call Ayman the “robotic Michelin starchef,” and social media clips of him “creating” new dishes havegone viral, sparking curiosity and excitement about thepossibilities of AI in cooking.

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