I am a serious foodie but a funny cook. Luckily, I live in New York, where it's nice not to cook and there are endless options for eating out. I am spoiled for culinary choice, with some of the best restaurants in the world within walking distance of my home.
I've tried to recreate my favorite foods, but I fail even with the simplest dishes. So when I heard there was artificial intelligence an app that would turn any photo into a recipe, I had to try it.
SideChef's RecipeGen AI app is a home cooking and online grocery platform. A new beta AI feature lets chefs (or loved chefs) take photos anyone a meal in a restaurant or on social media and it promises to instantly generate a step-by-step recipe.
I wanted to see how precise the ingredients were and how close it could be to a restaurant meal I had recently.
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.
Here you go!
From sous chef to side chef
Setup was simple. I downloaded it SideChef app on my phone and clicked on Addthen Create a recipe from a photo. You can either take a photo directly in the app or choose an image from your library.
To test the accuracy of SideChef, I wanted to try two methods:
- Upload a photo of a meal I've had at a restaurant.
- Upload a photo of a meal I've had at home (because I know exactly what I'm putting in it).
For the restaurant meal, I chose a starter dish so SideChef could easily decipher it. We had breakfast at Malibu Farm on a recent trip to California, where they put a fresh spin on breakfast staples like sweet butter and sourdough.
I checked the menu to see what the ingredients were so I could check better: “yeast focaccia and breakfast potatoes with a choice of strawberry or basil butter. “Kale, spinach, ricotta, eggs and bacon.”
Here's what SideChef came up with:
Right off the bat, I was disappointed by the lack of attention to detail. The dish had no red peppers, green peppers, onions or potato seasoning. I don't think it had milk either, but it did turn on SideChef. It also missed the flagship flavor profiles – strawberry butter, ricotta cheese and sourdough focaccia.
To give SideChef the benefit of the doubt, it's hard to tell focaccia from sourdough because the photo doesn't show the perforated top of the bread — but it didn't even mention the yeast.
It may also have been difficult for SideChef to spot the ricotta in the eggs (mistaking the creaminess for milk). He didn't even try the strawberry butter, prompting me to buy regular butter instead.
No, I love my strawberry butter. At this point, I felt SideChef was more interested in using AI to get an affiliate commission through Walmart (the fulfillment partner).
Before moving on to my homemade recipe, I tried another photo of a restaurant dish to test its culinary capabilities.
This time, Ramen!
I uploaded this photo:
It was “thinking” for about 15 seconds, then I got an error. Tried again as advised but no luck.
Okay SideChef, let's try this a different way. I chose my favorite dish that my wife makes: Sweet Potato Sausage Gnocchi!
I know the exact ingredients because she made a video about it:
- Sweet potato
- An egg
- Flour
- Sausage
- Mushrooms
- Butter
- Broth
- Parmesan
Here you go!
We are cooking now.
This time it went much better. It got the main ingredients but added sundried tomatoes, probably because we had basil on it.
With the ingredients 90% there, I checked how the app suggested I cook it and how it differed from how we actually made it.
SideChef suggested:
SideChef actually made the recipe more complicated than it needed to be. It's just seven simple steps:
- Heat the sweet potato, cut it in half, remove the jacket and mash it in a bowl.
- Add one egg and beat.
- Add in a cup of flour and mix.
- Cut the sweet potato dough into four pieces, roll each into a thin rope, then cut into small gnocchi pieces.
- Cook the sausage over the frying pan. Add mushrooms, butter and broth.
- Cook the gnocchi, then add them to the pan to crisp them up a bit.
- Sprinkle with parmesan cheese.
SideChef's recipe did not state to remove the jacket from the sweet potatoes or clearly state how to prepare it. He advised us to bake the gnocchi, but we cooked it. Besides, it was 70% there.
The chef's kiss?
It depends on the recipe. It has a hard time with nuance and, like other AI tools, tends to constitute it if uncertain. It's a handy little app that can be used to inspire new ideas and mixing ingredients, or if you're in a restaurant and don't want to bother the waiter with the details of a dish.
But for low-skilled people in the kitchen, SideChef probably doesn't have much use—especially for cooks like my wife who keep it and feel creatively limited by recipes, let alone AI.