One small chef will be 'cooking' up five course meals for Guelph diners with a twist in the near future.
Le Petit Chef brings new meaning to dinner and a show. It's an immersive experience by projecting a hologram on a dinner table and shows the tiny chef cooking up each course.
Although the food is projected on the plate, diners can eat real food when servers place it on their table.
The dining experience is made possible by 3D mapping from a Belgium company called Skullmapping.
Le Petit Chef started in Marseille, France in 2015 and has grown to countries and cruise lines around the world.
The Guelph location will be at 107 Wyndham St. N., most recently the Gin Mill. They hope to open by mid-September at the latest.
Dave Curran, owner operator of Le Petit Chef in Richmond Hill, Toronto and soon to be Guelph first had his eyes on the dining experience on Celebrity Cruises where the little chef took guests on a global cuisine tour on their plates.
Curran brought Le Petit Chef to Richmond Hill through a private dining room in Jokers Theatre and Comedy Club.
“Not everyone is tech savvy and it’s a little bit of magic for them,” said Curran.
The theatre part of the dining uses a storyline called The Beginning, the start of Le Petit Chef’s journey. The dinner is broken into five scenes, after each scene ends a new course arrives on diners' tables.
The next storylines expected to continue Le Petit Chef’s quest in Guelph is in about 18 months. The 'movies' are called Marco Polo, and How to Become the World’s Greatest Chef.
The fixed menu is salad, soup, chicken, beef, dessert and the food is expected to change when the story of Le Petit Chef moves forward.
The cuisine isn’t French. “The chef is from France but he travels around the world,” said Curran. “So wherever he lands he adapts and he makes the menu according to whatever country he is in.”
There are vegetarian and children’s menus but the projection doesn’t change based on dietary needs.
The capacity of Le Petit Chef will be 36 people. The dining room will serve 32 people. There are tables for four and eight people.
“This is a very good place to celebrate something,” said Curran. It’s not the kind of place where you could be strolling on Wyndham Street and pop in for a bite. It’s a place to plan to go to since it’s by reservation only.
The dining room uses very little lighting, the light from the projection illuminates the room.
Curran said he has always been a fan of Guelph. “We felt it’s a good location that can serve all other areas: Cambridge, Kitchener, Waterloo, Milton,” he said. “I think it’s a nice little theatre city.”
Le Petit Chef himelf has a personality, he’s a bit like Road Runner from Looney Tunes. “He seems to get himself into trouble and cause more problems for himself than necessary by getting into all these little problems that he digs his hole into,” said Curran.
If guests are unhappy with the food in front of them, they can’t voice their complaints to the chef because he’ll ignore them. But if diners talk to one of the chef’s helpers they can relay the information to him.
“The stage is your table. Your chairs that you’d be normally sitting at the River Run are not chairs in front of the stage. They’re at the table,” said Curran.
He lends the success of Le Petit Chef to its uniqueness. “It’s not something that someone could easily replicate,” he said.
