Pill dinners never quite caught on, and I don’t believe Virtual Reality dining will become a going concern anytime soon. Certainly there’s great potential in the entertainment portion of the hospitality industry. Do a karaoke duet with a hologram of your favorite pop singer or enjoy hearing a virtual Bobby Short at a piano bar. Even the windows and decor could be changed at will.

When it comes to the actual food, however, humans tend to like having their senses pleased rather than tricked. That hasn’t stopped the people at Project Nourished from experimenting with tools that go far beyond your basic utensils. From Erin Carson at CNET:

It might be the best meal you’ve never had.

A group of about 30 people in Los Angeles is experimenting with how we eat food, but not like Uber offering delivery or a bakery concocting a new donut-pastry combo. This time, you can put away the forks, knives, oven mitts and double mezzalunas.

It’s called Project Nourished, and what’s on your dinner table is a virtual reality headset, some devices that look like they came from a modern art museum, and something called “3D printed food.”

The way it works: You put on the headset and you’re transported to an interesting location, which is probably the most normal element of this exercise.

Also on the table are several other devices. One is an “aromatic diffuser,” which has a tube sticking out of it that blasts food aromas at you. Another is a “bone conduction transducer” that wraps around the back of your head to mimic the sounds and vibrations of chewing. There’s a cup for drinking. Finally, there’s a utensil shaped like tweezers. For eating.

Put all those items together, and you could be eating sushi in Japan, or be having a simulated food experience totally foreign to this world.

In reality, you’d be wearing odd-shaped devices that make you look like someone glued pieces of a honeycomb-shaped ball on your head, all while you chew on a piece of algae.•