The hot new Dubai restaurant run by an AI chef

On a slow afternoon a few years ago, Dubai restaurateur Ahmet Oytun Cakir was in his office considering menu inspiration. Then the hospitality veteran...

On a slow afternoon a few years ago, Dubai restaurateur Ahmet Oytun Cakir was in his office considering menu inspiration. Then the hospitality veteran, whose empire includes the popular hangouts BohoX and rove, had a brainstorm: He’d turn to ChatGPT.

Seconds later, the newly-released chatbot delivered a recipe for spiced lamb. Cakir decided to try it. "It was amazing, amazing,” he recalls. "Immediately we shot the photo, we put it on the menu. It became a bestseller.” That hit dish sparked a bolder thought: What if an entire restaurant could be powered by artificial intelligence?

Fast-forward to September 2025, when Cakir’s company, Gastronaut Hospitality, debuted Woohoo, an all-AI concept just steps from the Burj Khalifa. The restaurant, billed by the group as "the future of dining,” is fronted by "Chef Aiman,” a large language model trained on thousands of recipes, flavor pairings, and food data. Developed by a custom AI model called UMAI that was developed by United Arab Emirates-based tech firm Vivid Studios, the AI chef has been designed as an avatar: a middle-aged, Caucasian man with sleek silver goggles and a mysterious sci-fi allure.

Aiman doesn’t physically cook; it creates. It can analyze ingredients, generate unconventional flavor combinations and write detailed recipes that human chefs in Woohoo’s kitchen then test. When I met Aiman for the first time at UMAI’s studio last July, its screen image greeted me with a warm "habibti” - an Arabic term for "my dear,” showing off its Dubai origins. Asked about the restaurant, it responded enthusiastically: "It’s going to be a game changer in the culinary scene, and I feel so lucky to be part of it.”

A back to the future menu