Introduction: Dining experiences emerge from intertwined dimensions, including sensory, social, psychological, and environmental factors. Restaurants, as relational and multisensory contexts, exemplify this complexity. While prior research has highlighted the relevance of atmosphere and multisensory cues, the investigation has been limited by the difficulty of manipulating physical-world factors. Extended Reality provides a flexible approach to address this challenge, allowing systematic and controlled variation of environmental factors while preserving ecological validity.
Purpose: This work aimed to identify the critical aspects that need to be tackled for the design and development of a Hybrid Restaurant by involving expert professionals employed in the food sector.
Method: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 27 professionals (mean age 40) from the restaurant industry, including chefs, store managers, maitre d's, architects, interior and digital designers, and floral designers. The questions explored how the dining area where guests consume meals was arranged and the aspects that were considered more relevant for shaping the experience. A thematic analysis approach was adopted for clustering similar notes.
Results: Four macroareas were identified: the dining area, table setting and mise-en-place, sensory qualities of the dish, and the overall experience. Specifically, the analysis emphasised recurring aspects across roles, such as lighting as a factor in creating atmosphere, the influence of colour in dish presentation, and the relationship between food and the surrounding environment. These insights oriented the development of the Hybrid Restaurant platform, which builds on Mixed Reality (MR). This platform allows for systematic manipulation of several factors and examines how environmental features affect taste, multisensory perception, emotional responses, and dining behaviours.
Conclusions: By building on professionals' perspectives, the Hybrid Restaurant platform establishes an experimental setting that bridges real-world dining practices with controlled manipulations. This approach illustrates the potential of MR as a methodological tool for investigating Human-Environment interaction in dining contexts, with implications for hospitality and design.