Open Meals, creating 3D printed sushi

A few weeks ago during the South by SouthWest fair the Asian company Open Meals presented its project ‘Sushi Singularity’, or in other words its 3D printed sushi project. A new endeavour that will undoubtedly revolutionise the 3D printed food industry. We’ve previously talked about 3D printed chocolate or even food waste turned into 3D snacks, but this is the first time we’ve talked about something like 3D printed sushi. This week we talked to Hironao Kato, CTO of Open Meals. He talks about how the project came about and the technical challenges they have been facing in their quest to 3D print sushi.

3DN: How did the idea of creating Open Meals come about and what is its relation with 3D printing?

The very first inspiration of this project came from CMYK printing model. Our founder, who is an art director, had this wild idea: If the colours are divided into 4 elements, why not with food? We called the food version of CMYK the SSSB, which stands for Salty, Sour, Sweet and Bitter. After, we did some experiments with a 2D printer and edible paper and inks, we thought it might work. Then we moved to 3D printing.

3DN: Can you tell us more about the project “Sushi Singularity”?

The Open Meals project is a challenge to digitise food of every kind, and make ‘Food Singularity’ a reality.