Around the world, an industry has emerged around automating food service through robotics, raising questions about job security and mass unemployment while also prompting praise for streamlining and innovation.

In the epicenter of Silicon Valley, where innovation is exalted beyond all else, this industry has played out in various forms, from cafes, burger shops and pizza delivery to odd vending machines.

Man cannot survive on bread alone, the saying goes, but in the Bay Area, a woman could conceivably sustain herself on a varied menu of foodstuffs that had not passed the hand of man in preparation at all that day. And that woman is me.

An adorable electronic barista

I began my day with a coffee at CafeX, where I met Francisco, the dancing and spinning robotic arm. He was perhaps the friendliest barista I have ever encountered in San Francisco, a city where coffee is an art form and those behind the counter the intimidating artists.

He sat behind glass, his human minders never far away, twirling and wiggling and engaging passersby. CafeX has been at the Metreon shopping center since 2017, but Francisco’s antics still drew crowds. Tourists flocked around the sleek case to take pictures and videos of the robot in action, many putting in orders just to watch Francisco work. “This is a machine making drinks?” one woman asked Francisco’s minder. “No humans? Oh my God.”

Francisco offered the same high-quality options as most other coffee shops, allowing the customer the choice between Intelligentsia, Ritual and Equator coffee beans, and the choice between local organic Clover milk or a Swedish oat milk. My $5.20 iced mocha came out without any problem, and as I watched him prepare it, I realized that as futuristic as Francisco appeared, much of what he did was akin to the work of an automated espresso machine at the local 7-Eleven. Mind you, the drink that he passed to me through the drink hole was much higher quality than your typical automated espresso machine drink, but for all his showmanship and pizzazz, all he really did was push a button.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Francisco the robot offered the same high-quality options as most other coffee shops would. Photograph: Cayce Clifford/The Guardian

But oh, how he pushed that button! This robotic arm was no barista; he was a performer. Francisco would brace forward like a puppy at play, waggling his claw back and forth. Within minutes, I had grown attached to this robotic arm, this little engine that could, this piece of unfeeling metal with heart. I forgave him all mistakes, which was good because there were indeed mistakes.

I put in an order for a $4.16 iced matcha latte, but instead of presenting me a beautiful vessel of milky green liquid, Francisco plopped some green goo into the bottom of a cup and called it a day. Francisco’s human minders rushed into action, opening up the door into his glass chamber. I asked what they were doing, and they told me they were deploying the most common fix-all when it comes to technology, which was turning him off and on again. On the second go-around, Francisco put too much ice into the cup, and one of the human minders apologetically brought over a more presentable drink.

I asked one of the minders if she had ever gotten attached to Francisco like I had gotten attached to him, and she looked at me as if I had asked her if she had ever developed feelings for an inanimate object.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Creator Burgers, where a robot makes your burger. Photograph: Cayce Clifford/The Guardian

Inhaling a bot-made burger

Our second stop of the day brought us to Creator, where a robot makes your burger, but that’s pretty much the only thing they do. In the infinite wars of humans v robots, humans clearly won at Creator. Human staff greet you at the door to take your order. Human chefs created the menu items. Humans even make the french fries, side salads and side vegetables.

But as at CafeX, the draw of a robot has people lining out the door to get into the restaurant. This is not the place to go to if your reason for partaking in automated food service is to avoid humans, because during my visit, humans packed the space in anxiety-inducing numbers. They crowded the machines to watch the burger form in a conveyor-belt sequence, from the cutting and toasting and saucing of the bun, to the slicing and placing of the vegetables, to the shredding and melting of the cheese, and finally to the placing of the patty.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Two machines service the restaurant, one behind the counter and one to the side of the counter, for easier viewing purposes. Photograph: Cayce Clifford/The Guardian

Two machines service the restaurant, one behind the counter and one to the side of the counter, for easier viewing purposes. I asked if the staff had named their robots, the first in the world to make burgers, and was firmly told that they do not anthropomorphize their machines. These machines were no Francisco – they were culinary devices. Every action had a purpose, such as when the vegetables were sliced – some research says that sliced onions taste bitter if they sit sliced for too long, so the machine freshly chops off a sliver of an onion for each burger. Nothing is flipping or twirling for our entertainment here.

Then again, these machines aren’t just pushing a button. Behind them are screens of complicated code and a station with laptops and keyboards and human beings to make sure everything is going well. And the burgers that the machines create are leagues better than some burgers I’ve tasted that were crafted by humans. The beef is juicy and well-seasoned, and the variety of recipes created by the human chefs has each burger hitting diverse flavor notes that manage to scratch the same itch you want to scratch when you seek out a burger. I inhaled almost all of my favorite, the Tumami Burger ($6.07) before remembering that I had two other burgers to try in front of me – after which I had two other favorites, the Recreator ($6.07) and the Mission Street Food Burger ($7.07). Everything feels fresh with these burgers, from the beef to the sauces to the vegetables, so that it almost defies belief that it came from a machine.

Burned by robot ramen

I returned to the Metreon for my third stop of the day, Yo-Kai Express, the vending machine that serves piping hot ramen noodles. For the first time, I had a machine with no human minder, and it felt daunting. I ordered through a touchpad screen, which flashed what felt like far too many warnings about how the ramen was going to be hot, and patiently awaited the 30 seconds for my $13.07 black oil garlic ramen to arrive.

To my dismay, the machine presented the ramen to me in a semi-sealed container, under a red plastic lid winking proudly up at me like an orifice meant to dispel waste. It was akin to seeing all the individual parts that go into a sausage before they’re ground up into mush.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Yo-Kai Express at the Metreon in downtown San Francisco. Photograph: Cayce Clifford/The Guardian

Just as the machine had warned me, the ramen was, indeed, very hot. I could barely carry it from the machine to the table without fearing I’d sear off my fingerprints. And it was pretty much at this point that I had had enough of the soup. I took off the offensive lid and found the soup covered in two layers of plastic. I slurped some of the sodium-heavy broth and uninspired noodles, and moped under a heavy cloud of disappointment. For good measure, I popped a piece of the chewy pork into my mouth as well before I tossed the majority of the bowl. From his location just feet away, Francisco waved merrily as I skulked off in disappointment.

The tea that never was

I needed a palate cleanser after all that, but instead I found the robot that never was. Encountering TeaBOT was similar to walking into a fully stocked store during store hours only to find nobody inside but you. I came across the automated cart-sized robot to find its credit card machine working but the touchpad screen to put in an order completely black.

Tea leaves filled the clear cylinders overhead enticingly, under labels advertising yerba mate, masala chai, jasmine, sencha, chamomile and rooibos. The special lids made for filtering tea sat ready for the taking in a side chamber. Everything seemed prepared for a customer, yet nothing could take my order. “Should I unplug it?” I wondered.

The company’s website still lists the San Francisco location as operational, but it clearly was not. Who knows. Maybe it was taking a sick day.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest TeaBOT, the automated cart-sized robot that makes tea. Photograph: Cayce Clifford/The Guardian

A perfect baguette

After my ramen disaster, I was expecting the worst from the bread vending machine, located in a mall in the far south-west corner of the city. Instead, I found a crisp, fluffy baguette, similar to one I’d buy from a grocery store.

The machine holds a limited number of baguettes per day, and I chanced upon the second-to-last baguette of the day. I inserted my card, and for $4, I received a warm – not scalding, ramen hot – toasty, perfect baguette. I immediately ripped a chunk out of the loaf as I walked away, and I was pleasantly surprised by the freshness of it all. Bread, in particular, could go wrong so easily, but the crust had a good crunch to it while the middle maintained that cloud-soft fluff.

My only problem with the baguette was that it wasn’t near an automated robot butter vending machine, or a strawberry jam culinary device, or a Francisco that twirled up a perfect cheese-and-charcuterie plate. I’m guessing this machine is not meant for writers pulling stunts like only eating robot-prepared foods all day, but bread alone can get dull.

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Extraordinarily all right pizza

My last stop of the day took me out of San Francisco to Mountain View, home of Google. It was also the only point of the day where I questioned whether a robot was actually involved in the preparation process at all.

I had concerns from the get-go about Zume Pizza because from all my research, it didn’t appear to be the sort of place where I could just walk in and get a slice. It seemed the way the place operated, robots and humans collaborated to make the pizza itself before sending it out, semi-baked, in a delivery truck full of ovens, where it cooks the rest of the way en route to its final destination. Zume Pizza seemed delivery dependent, but if I was not deterred by the existential-dread ramen, I definitely was not going to be deterred by delivery-dependent pizza.

I arrived at the location listed for the business in Mountain View, only to find the company’s offices. The woman at the front desk told me there was no other option but to get the pizza delivered, so I had a Sgt Pepperoni pie delivered to the office.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A robot places a pizza into an oven at Zume Pizza in Mountain View, California. Photograph: Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP

The company prides itself on getting your order to you faster than other pizza shops, and in that regard, Zume Pizza delivered. I put the order in at 4.46pm, and my “pielot”, Ted, arrived at 4.59pm. I expected a delivery truck like the ones pictured on the company website – one equipped with the individual ovens that would bake your pizza along the way – but instead, Ted pulled up in a silver sedan, in which my pizza sat in a warming bag in his backseat.

Undeterred, I settled myself at a picnic table outside the office and opened up the compostable pizza pod. I immediately got hit in the face by a wave of steam, as the pizza was scalding vending-machine-ramen levels of hot. Maybe this is how robots think humans measure quality – “does it burn”?

After waiting for it to cool down, I dug in, and found everything at extraordinary levels of all right. The dough had a good crunch but was still chewy, the cheese was melty and gooey, and the pepperoni was large and fresh. But something about it all felt so incredibly bland and generic that it reminded me of the nameless, interchangeable frozen pizza you shove in your oven on the nights you don’t feel like cooking.

The pizza itself cost $9.99, but with a $4.99 delivery fee and tax, the meal came out to $16.33. And honestly, the most worthwhile part of it all was when I gave it away after getting back to San Francisco.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Robots have their drawbacks. Photograph: Cayce Clifford/The Guardian

On my way to TeaBOT, I thought back to the last time I visited a tea shop – Crown and Crumpet in San Francisco’s Japantown. I asked our server for his recommendations, and it was only through this interaction that I discovered Stardust, a sparkly black tea blend with actual glitter inside that tasted like a clear autumn day just before sunset. Permanent damage to my gastrointestinal system aside, it felt truly magical.

People like to bring up magic when they talk about robots and robotic food preparation. But even if TeaBOT had been fully operational, I’d never have experienced the sort of magic I found that day at Crown and Crumpet. TeaBOT would not have been able to ask me what kind of teas I enjoyed, and it would not have been able to discern from my personality and dress that I was the type of person who appreciated something marketed as “the perfect blend for your favourite Unicorn”. Even Francisco, with all his charisma and showmanship, could only push a button.

Throughout my day eating only foods prepared by robots, I noticed that most of the people who flocked to these places were there for the novelty of eating foods prepared by robots. They wanted to be wowed. They wanted magic.

Perhaps some of them felt they got it. As for me, I felt no magic. Magic is a human invention.