Sushi Singularity: the future of food is customized and 3D printed
Open Meals' plans to open new 3D printed sushi restaurant in Tokyo by 2020

Satisfying a sushi craving is already an incredibly rewarding thing. Japanese startup Open Meals, however, believes it can make that experience even more rewarding, not just for your taste buds but for your overall body. The innovative company, which sparked interest at last year’s SXSW event for its 3D printed 8-bit sushi, is now proposing a new restaurant, Sushi Singularity, which will serve 3D printed sushi filled with the nutrients your body needs.

When I say “your body,” I mean it in the specific sense, as the company plans to base its sushi recipes on information derived from the diner’s biological samples. That is, the restaurant will send out a biological sample kit to customers before their dinner date at Sushi Singularity. Once sent back, the restaurant will analyze the client’s saliva, urine and stool samples to determine what nutrients they might be lacking.
With that information, the restaurant will put together a nutrients profile that will be essentially printed into sushi. The concept builds off of Open Meals’ Sushi Teleportation project from last year, which deposits morsels of ingredients into a sushi-inspired shape, introducing new textures, forms and flavours.
At Sushi Singularity, a range of methods, including Laser FDM, SLS, Chilled FDM and a CNC router will be used to produce a variety of edibles, each packed with the custom nutrient profile for the diner. In keeping with the technological angle, the recipes will be determined by a Food Operating System, which will “disassemble the elements that make up dishes and then reconstitute them at the centimeter scale.”

Though the idea in itself might not seem super appetizing—who wants to be thinking about their stool sample before going to chow down on sushi?—the novelty of it might bring the upcoming Sushi Singularity restaurant success. I can’t say that I’d turn down the opportunity to eat fully customized 3D printed sushi.
Open Meals has clearly got its eye on the future of food and it believes that customized meals will become increasingly popular and widespread. As it writes on its website: “Hyper-personalization will become common for future foods. Based on DNA, urine and intestinal tests, people will each have individual health IDs. This identity is analyzed and nutritional matching is performed to match nourishment needs with biometrics, thus the person is automatically provided with the optical diet.”
Sushi Singularity is expected to open in 2020 in Tokyo, so you should book your table soon! Open Meals’ website already offers a glimpse at the menu, which includes Cell Cultured Tuna, Anisotropic Stiffness Steamed Shrimp, Micro Pillar Saltwater Eel and more.