Overlooking an artificial beach in sultry Singapore, Rong Heng Seafood Restaurant has been touted as the future of eating out.

Unveiled earlier this year – to much fanfare – the eatery has dispensed with the conventional dining formula by enlisting the services of two robotic waitresses, which, the owners crow, will compensate for a supposed lack of manpower in the city state.

They will also, surely, sound alarm bells for anyone who waits tables for a living: unlike human waiting staff, Rong Heng’s robots can work all day without rest or remuneration, and don’t require holiday pay, sick pay or pensions, which is a dream come true for penny-pinching employers.

Ever mindful of the relentless march of robots – which experts gloomily predict will take most of our jobs within 30 years – I popped along to Rong Heng on a recent trip to Singapore, to see how worried the world’s waiting staff should be.

 

On first inspection, the eatery didn’t seem to be causing much disruption to the analogue dining experience. While a neighbouring restaurant, Hong Kong Tea House, with its old-fashioned human staff, was stacked to the rafters with punters, Rong Heng was all but empty. Apart from a young family on another table, whose son was receiving a rendition of “happy birthday” by a small, dancing robot, I was the only diner in there.

That didn’t come as a surprise, because Rong Heng is not what I’d call inviting. Illuminated with those ultra-bright bulbs that make you wish you’d brought sunglasses, the restaurant is also, inexplicably, decorated with AstroTurf; yes, the stuff you play five-a-side on, which, for some reason, hangs on the walls.

Some scientsts reckon robots will have taken most of our jobs within the next 30 years Credit: GAVIN HAINES

Speaking of football, my visit clashed with a Man City game, which was playing on a gigantic television screen inside the restaurant. I turned around to avoid being drawn into the match, only to be faced with a red, wall-mounted box labelled “the main fire alarm panel”, which, sporadically, let out high-pitched beeps. I switched my gaze again, to the other side of the restaurant, where sad looking fish were swimming around in soulless tanks. I caught myself sighing.

The menu offered little in the way of cheer, containing as it did shark fin soup, a dish responsible for slowly emptying the ocean of its apex predator. I considered leaving.

Fortunately, a smiling human waiter called Cool managed to lift my spirits. He offered advice on what to eat and explained more about his robotic colleagues, Lucy and Mary, which were lined up obediently outside the kitchen.

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