Tired of Eating Out? I Tried This Recipe-Generating AI Tool to Create a Restaurant Meal at Home
I’m a serious foodie but a ridiculous cook. Thankfully, I live in New York City, where it’s cool not to cook and there are endless options for dining out. I’m spoiled for choice when it comes to food, with some of the best restaurants in the world just steps away from my home.
I’ve tried to recreate some of my favorite foods, but even the simplest dishes just can’t be done. So when I heard there was a AI The app can turn any photo into a recipe, I had to try it.
SideChef’s RecipeGen AI App is a home cooking and online grocery platform. New beta AI feature lets chefs (or wannabe chefs) take photos any Cook a dish in a restaurant or on social media and it promises to instantly generate step-by-step recipes.
I wanted to see how accurate the ingredients were and how closely it matched recent meals I’ve had at restaurants.
SideChef is an award-winning shopping recipe platform that has been on the market since 2013, and its RecipeGen AI feature launched this month as a step-by-step home cooking app. It’s free to download and use.
Let’s get started!
From sous chef to sous chef
Setup is simple. I downloaded Oven App on my phone and click Add toThen Generate recipes from photos. You can take photos directly in the app or select images from the gallery.
To test the accuracy of SideChef, I wanted to try two methods:
- Upload a photo of a meal I had at a restaurant Dining room.
- Upload a photo of a meal I ate Home (Because I know exactly what I’m putting in it).
While dining at the restaurant, I chose beginner-friendly brunch dishes to make it easier for SideChef to decipher. We have brunch at Malibu Farm On a recent trip to California, they put fresh twists on breakfast staples like sweet butter and pillowy sourdough.
I checked the menu to see what the ingredients were so I could better cross-check: “Stir fry – sourdough focaccia and breakfast potatoes, choice of strawberry or basil butter. Kale, spinach, ricotta, eggs and bacon.”
This is the idea of SideChef:
Immediately, I was disappointed with the lack of attention to detail. This dish has no red bell pepper, green bell pepper, onion or potato seasoning. I thought it didn’t have milk either, but SideChef includes it. It also misses out on key flavor profiles – strawberry butter, ricotta cheese and sourdough focaccia bread.
To be fair, it’s hard to tell sourdough focaccia apart since the photo doesn’t show the indentation on top of the bread, but it doesn’t even list sourdough bread.
SideChef may also have trouble finding ricotta in eggs (mistaking the creaminess for milk). It didn’t even try to use strawberry butter, prompting me to buy regular butter.
No, I want my bougie strawberry butter. At this point, I feel like SideChef is more interested in using AI to earn affiliate commissions through Walmart (fulfillment partner).
Before starting my home-cooked recipe, I tried another photo of a restaurant dish to test its cooking abilities.
This time it’s ramen!
I uploaded this photo:
It “thinks” for about 15 seconds and then I get an error. I tried again as suggested but without success.
Okay, SideChef, let’s try a different approach. I chose my wife’s favorite dish: sweet potato gnocchi with sausage!
I know the exact ingredients because she made a video about it:
- sweet potato
- Egg
- flour
- sausage
- mushroom
- butter
- broth
- parmesan cheese
Let’s get started!
Now we are cooking.
Did much better this time. It had the main ingredient but had sun-dried tomatoes added, probably because we put basil on top.
With 90% of the ingredients in hand, I checked how the app suggested I cook it and how it differed from how we actually cooked it.
Sous Chef Suggestions:
In fact, SideChef makes recipes more complex than they need to be. Simply put, it’s seven steps:
- Heat the sweet potatoes, cut into slices down the middle, remove the skin and mash in a bowl.
- Add one egg and stir.
- Add one cup of flour and mix.
- Cut the sweet potato dough into four pieces, roll each piece into a string, then cut into smaller pieces.
- Cook sausage on skillet. Add mushrooms, butter and broth.
- Boil the gnocchi and mash it slightly in the skillet.
- Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.
In SideChef’s recipe, there are no specific instructions to remove the sweet potato skins or how to prepare them. It suggested we bake the gnocchi, but we boiled it. Beyond that, there’s 70%.
Chef’s kiss?
It depends on the recipe. It has difficulty distinguishing nuances, and like other AI tools, tend to make up for it If not sure. It’s a handy little app that can be used to inspire new ideas and ingredient mixtures, or if you’re in a restaurant and don’t want to bother the waiter with dish details.
But for those with a modicum of skill in the kitchen, SideChef may not be of much use—especially chefs like my wife, who improvise and feel creatively limited by recipes, let alone artificial intelligence.
