Yari Club will be London's first robotic yakitori restaurant

Yari Club will be a 20-cover QSR restaurant located on St Martin’s Lane in central London and will mark the first time such a machine has been seen outside of Asia.

It will be launched by Jimmy Tjhie, founder of Methusellah, which has exclusive rights to the technology in the UK and Europe.

The menu will offer a selection of eight traditional chicken yakitori dishes: tsukune (meatball), kawa (skin), mune (breast), momo (thigh), toriniku (thigh and breast), classic negima (thigh and spring onion) miso mune (miso-marinated breast) and teba (wings).

Also available will be a prawn tеmpura skewer and a selection of sides.

The skewers will be available in singles or multiples served in a rice box as a complete meal. 

Customers place an order with the Yari Club staff, who manually load the skewers onto the machine's grabbing arm. Diners can watch the 1.5m long robotic yakitori machine process their order via a grasp, grill, and sauce dipping mechanic, resulting in a wait time of around five minutes from ordering.

“Our aim with Yari Club is to use customer-visible robotics to add a fun and futuristic dynamic to the central London QSR scene,” says Tjhie. 

“The auto-rotating yakitori grill machine will be placed at the front of our unit so customers can follow their orders and passers-by be entertained. We hope to see the same enthusiasm as in Asia, where the robots and chefs successfully work side by side.

“While adding a fun element to the consumer experience, the machine also benefits from low power consumption, takes up a small space, and has a big capacity for production. It is easy to operate and clean and has variable speeds for different types of foods.” 

The 650sq ft restaurant will open on 1 October.