Sauce and sorcery

Video projections on your plate, holograms dancing at the table, customised tunes with every course. Tech's coming to dinner. Will you reorder or reboot?

- Arshia

Krasota, in Dubai, has been open for just over a year and accommodates only 20 guests for dinner. But already, it's the talk of the culinary world. What kind of cuisine does it serve? That's the wrong question, and an outdated one.

Fans refer to their meal as a gastro-theatrical experience. Diners choose from two shows: One dedicated to famous art and artists; another that focuses on mankind's possible futures. Everyone's seated at one round table, with images and video projected on to the tabletop, walls and floor. These aren't just customised to every visitor; they respond to their movements too. Virtual lemons roll and bump against real wineglasses; koi swim alongside plates, dodging people's attempts to catch them. The music, visuals, even the servers' uniforms change through the evening. Oh, there's food too, an eightcourse tasting menu, served over two hours.

Viraj Kamaal, a 35-year-old yoga instructor from Mangaluru, travelled to Dubai in April, expressly to eat at Krasota. He booked his table weeks in advance and paid AED 1800 (41,000) for the experience. It was worth it, he says. "You sense your food in more ways than one." His favourite course was the artichoke curry with coconut rice, inspired by Russian philosopher-painter Nicholas Roerich's paintings of the Himalayas. "When you mix the curry with the rice, the paintings unfurl in front of you in shades of orange and red, as Jai Radha Madhav plays," he says. Also served was a dish of black cod with plum and fig, paired with Russian painter Ivan Aivazovsky's iconic The Ninth Wave. "It was an intriguing combination," says Kamaal. "The plum and fig remind you of the colours of the waves. The cod is so crispy and tangy that it offsets that fruity sweetness and texture. You do feel like the food has various dimensions."