For local college students racing to grab a quick bite between classes, Mahjong may be the answer.

Just a few blocks from the Johns Hopkins University, Saint Paul Street’s newest Chinese restaurant features a buffet line with small bowls full of fried rice, steamed eggs and mapo tofu, many of them for $4 or less.

In the kitchen are the secret weapons that owner Arthur Dai says make his low-priced concept possible: a set of artificial intelligence-powered robots. With some human supervision, the swirling drums of the robots combine and cook ingredients and even rinse themselves off between dishes.

It’s just the latest way robots and AI are shaking up the hospitality industry. The Baltimore area is already home to restaurants where robotic food runners serve diners; check out Izakaya 68 in Hunt Valley or Towson’s Akira Ramen. And some eateries nationally are using Chat GPT to design more profitable menus, or deploying AI-powered systems to manage bookings. Now they’re in the kitchen, too.

Dai, a Hopkins grad who grew up in China, says Mahjong’s reliance on robots helps him keep labor costs down, and, in turn, he’s able to offer low-priced fare to students on a budget. The restaurant is named for the popular game that requires players to mix and match different tiles into sets — the same way customers can combine various foods into a single meal.

At Mahjong, the robot doesn’t do everything. The recipes it uses come from Zhenya Li, a chef with his own cult following from his time at Colala Grind Express in West Baltimore’s BioPark, which closed last year. Li and other staff still work in the kitchen of Mahjong, preparing wok-centric plates that the robots, from Chinese firm Botinkit, can’t execute. But eventually, Dai says, he envisions robots preparing the majority of items on the menu, which will someday include dishes from Korea, Thailand and elsewhere in Asia.

For restaurant owners, robots could offer an attractive solution to the ever-present issue of finding or training the skilled labor needed to run a kitchen. “There’s a lot of pros to it,” said Ekiben owner Steve Chu, who has not yet been to Mahjong. While restaurant food is expensive to make, diners are often limited in how much money they’re willing to spend on meals out.

But while Chu thinks robots could find a place in fast food restaurants, he doesn’t think they could master the specialized techniques and high temperatures involved in more advanced cooking. He has no plans to introduce one at Ekiben.

”AI is not replacing plumbers anytime soon, and I don’t see them replacing line cooks,” he said.

But Botinkit’s founder says her new robots are bringing restaurants into the 21st century. “The kitchen is the biggest industry in the world because everyone everywhere needs to eat,” Shirley Chen told The South China Morning Post last year. “However, it’s still a very traditional industry today, but that’s not the direction the world is heading.”

The company touts benefits beyond just cooking. Its software can track orders, inventory and more, according to an Instagram post. Botinkit is exploring recipe development, too. At a recent European cooking demo, the Omni, its main prototype, prepared dishes like pasta and tiramisu.

But even if the robot could prepare a perfect pizza, don’t expect to see chefs like Andrew Weinzirl embracing the new technology.

“I’m completely against using AI for basically anything,” said the chef at Zavino, the pizzeria and wine shop inside Cross Keys.

Even if the technology were to advance, he thinks an AI-powered robot would lack the creativity needed to execute his menu. Pizza dough, for example, is sensitive to the temperature of the air and moisture in the atmosphere, and cooks need to be able to make adjustments on the fly.

“I can’t see a robot or AI being able to course-correct,” he said. “There’s so much intuition that goes into it.”

So far, though, feedback on the food at Mahjong seems to be positive, particularly for its affordability. While the blocks surrounding Hopkins are already home to a number of Chinese eateries, many of them are on the pricier side, says Waverly resident Alice Dan-Ding, who ate at Mahjong during its soft opening. The restaurant offers an accessible alternative. “If you just get a side of rice with one dish, that’s going to cost you less than $10, which is really hard to come by,” she said.

Mahjong has a menu geared toward authentic Chinese dishes that Dai says customers might not always be familiar with — you won’t find General Tso’s here. But another benefit to keeping prices low is that customers don’t need to spend big to expand their palate. “People are not there to spend $20, $30 for a dish that they never tried before,” he said.

But for $4, you might be willing to gamble.