Bun Boy Calicut

Austin Food Truck Used ChatGPT Recipes to See How AI Works for Food | Eater Austin

"Operating as a bao-centric food truck at Oskar Blues Brewery, Bunboy’s chef Donald Mullikin experimented with ChatGPT to create a yakitori trio—chicken skewers grilled over binchotan charcoal—served with three sauces (bacon, yuzu kosho, and miso-dijon). Mullikin originally leaned on the AI for math-heavy tasks—scaling recipes, converting measurements, and cost analysis—and found it extremely helpful (it could calculate cost per portion down to fractions of a penny), so he tried collaborating with it on ingredients and flavor balance; the AI showed a basic sense of balance but tended toward red pepper powder and produced sauces that were under-salted until he adjusted them with additions like Lao Gan Ma and kimchi juice. The limited AI-assisted yakitori sold out after two days, but Mullikin says the creative experiment had mixed results: while ChatGPT is a useful idea generator and administrative tool, he probably won’t rely on it to write recipes because it removes the fun of failure and lacks playfulness, nostalgia, and the “heart” to cook with love—he even found it couldn’t emulate the nostalgic, playful qualities of chefs like David Chang. The food truck is currently temporarily closed after Mullikin was injured." - H. Drew Blackburn