Yahoo Movies Roseville restaurant introduces robot servers as automation grows in Sacramento’s dining scene
The server stood out from my meal at the Grand Indian Cuisine in Roseville last week (read more on the food below). She was about 4 feet tall, faceless and wouldn’t get close to our table because my friend’s knee was sticking out.
She was a robot, built by Bear Robotics in Redwood City and deployed at the Grand for the last three years. Armed with a trash bucket and pre-programmed knowledge of table numbers (Table A1, Table B1, etc.), she delivered Pallipalayam chicken fry when human servers were busy and left us with a cheery “have a good one, enjoy!”
Robot servers are slowly becoming more commonplace in the Sacramento area’s dining scene and the United States restaurants as a whole. There are burger-flipping bots in San Francisco, auto-mixed cocktails aboard cruise ships and sidewalk-rolling machines that deliver food to Los Angeles customers within a two-mile radius in just 15 minutes.
In the Sacramento area, Oz Korean BBQ has used BellaBots manufactured by Chinese company Pudu since the start of last year and now runs two at each of its locations (Rosemont and Elk Grove).
Kura Revolving Sushi Bar, which has a location in Sacramento’s Howe Bout Arden shopping center, doesn’t just shoot salmon nigiri down a conveyor belt to people sitting at the bar; “Kur-B the KuraBot” began delivering drinks and condiments to tables at all 37 U.S. locations in June.
Oz struggled to fill its staff coming out of the pandemic, like many restaurants. The all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue restaurant consulted other businesses that had used automated servers, then demoed on-site with a few different companies’ models, owner Peter Kim said.
While the BellaBots just run food from kitchen to table, other models can bring dirty dishes back, seat customers as the restaurant host or even prepare meals with minimal supervision. Oz might employ a more advanced digital assistant, but for now, Kim is happy to have his robots do menial work.
“They offer a reliable, static (workforce) that’s main function is to support our employees,” Kim wrote in an email. “Their intent in our application is not really to replace humans(,) but more acting as a support to our team and handling the mundane tasks.”
What I’m Eating
The Grand Indian Cuisine sits inauspiciously in Roseville’s Fairway Creek Shopping Center, its bold flavors somewhat hidden in an expansive suburban parking lot. Also known as the Grand Porottas or Porottas South Indian Cuisine, it’s a 5-year-old South Indian restaurant owned by Arunachalam and Kavita Mohanraj.
South Indian cuisine tends to be more vegetarian and pescatarian-friendly than food from the north, uses rice more than naan and can be spicier. Beyond that, the Grand gets hyper-local throughout its menu, specifying what region or even city certain dishes come from in an effort to educate diners.
Such was the case with the Alleppey fish masala ($17), a terrific tilapia curry that’s rooted in a 175,000-person city in the Indian coastal state Kerala. The melt-in-your-mouth fish got most of its flavor from a burnt orange gravy that included mangoes, ground coconut, cumin seed paste and ginger. It made my party want to try more curries on our next visit.
Ghee podi mini idli ($11) were a fun, super-shareable way to experience a South Indian breakfast classic (it worked fine as a dinner appetizer, too). Sand dollar-sized steamed rice cakes, their consistency similar to cornmeal or arepas, were tossed in a vibrant mixture of basil and spices. It’s common to dip idli in sambar, a flavorful lentil stew also offered at the Grand, but I didn’t miss it at all here.
As with the usually-larger idli, you can get chewy parathas ($4 per piece) in their classic form. Or you can order kothu paratha ($14), a South Indian street treat that involves shredding the flatbread, mixing it with vegetables or eggs (or chicken, for $2 more) and smashing it into a square loaf. Gentle and warm, it was somewhat similar to a casserole, and better than it sounds.
The Grand Indian Cuisine
Address: 9600 Fairway Drive, Suite 100, Roseville.
Hours: 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. and 5-9:30 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. and 5-10 p.m. Friday, 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Saturday, 11:30-9:30 Sunday.
Phone number: (916) 773-0212.
Website: https://thegrandcuisine.com
Drinks: Beer and wine.
Animal-free options: Many, clearly marked on the menu.
Noise level: Relatively quiet.
Openings & Closings
Kitchen 15 opened last Wednesday at 1630 K St. in midtown Sacramento, replacing Squeeze Burger and a short-lived Umai Savory Hot Dogs location. Owner Ed David, the former Umai franchisee, has cooks whipping up familiar breakfast and lunch dishes such as avocado toast and ahi poke salad.
University of Beer’s sixth area location opened that same day in East Sacramento. The popular beer bar and kitchen replaced Track 7 Brewing’s The Other Side taproom at 5090 Folsom Blvd.
Best Dim Sum is Granite Bay’s new Chinese restaurant, slinging custard buns, chow mein, siu mai and more at 8675 Auburn Folsom Road.
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