Café Futuresque grew out of real research. The menus are built from what people across different contexts have imagined we might eat in 30 or 100 years. What started as a research output became an experiential format: a pop-up café where the menu itself is the centre, inviting visitors to sit with the questions that future of food research keeps raising. Where are we now, where are we heading, and how do we actually feel about it?
The menu includes “Not Your Grandma’s Salad”: lab-grown vegan chicken, kale, algae crisps, and carbon-negative dressing. The “Soil-to-Sip Smoothie” blends regenerative greens, adaptogenic fungi, and nano-hydrated chia. And for the nostalgic among us, the “Plastic-Wrapped Candy Bar,” listed as a Forbidden Relic.
A little weird for some? Absolutely. That’s rather the point.
It wasn’t surprising that many came into the pilot workshop at BIOTOPE FESTIVAL worried about the future of food. But it was interesting what happened next.
73% of participants thought we would see menus like this in restaurants or cafés within 20 years, and almost 50% within the next 10, well within most of our lifetimes.
The highest-rated emotion during the experience was “uncomfortable.” The second was “empowered.” Just under half said they wouldn’t be comfortable eating from the menu. The reasons: it’s “too artificial,” it “has no gustatory pleasure,” or it “will kill a lot of work.” The participants who said they would be comfortable? “We will have to adapt,” or simply curious to try.
And yet, afterwards 80% felt their own choices help shape food futures. Many who came in worried stayed worried (concern about prices, taste, and what we might lose didn’t go away), but discomfort and agency turned out not to be in conflict. If anything, sitting with an uncomfortable future seemed to activate people rather than shut them down.
That showed up in the written responses too. Inspired actions ranged from “going to buy vegetables from the next Sunday market” to “growing my own garden” and “making more thoughtful choices.” Specific, grounded, personal.
Finally, more than half said the brief experience shifted how they feel about the future of food, at least to some extent. The most chosen reason? It made the future feel closer and more real. We often relate to the further-away futures outside our personal horizons as something distant, to be decided later, by systems larger than us. What we need are ways to bring these futures into the present imagination, creating spaces that encourage sitting with the uncertainty, until Sunday’s grocery run can start to feel like part of the answer.
We’re continuing to develop the format and would love to hear what these findings bring up for you. What’s on your imagined menu for 2056?
Café Futuresque is part of our work supported by the Fondation APRIL.
