Ministerial visit to the new Smart Gastronomy Lab building

On Friday, October 15, 2021, the Vice-President of Wallonia, Minister of Economy, Innovation and Research, Mr. Willy Borsus, visited the new Smart Gastronomy Lab building, located in the heart of the new culinary and food innovation district of the Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech Faculty.

The Smart Gastronomy Lab's new buildings along Avenue Maréchal Juin are nearing completion and preparing for their inauguration, expected in the first quarter of 2022. Currently housed in the heart of the Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech faculty, the Smart Gastronomy Lab is a food innovation and creativity laboratory that has been cultivating "better eating" since its creation in 2015. A place of experimentation and culinary sciences, it is an innovation laboratory, a forerunner in Belgium, and will soon make its new 600 square meter building its own.

3D printing, augmented reality or connected tools: the Smart Gastronomy Lab relies on technologies from the culinary sciences to meet the food challenges of tomorrow. Already awarded a "Culinary Innovators Award" by Gault&Millau, it will host, among other things, an experimental restaurant, a unique tool for product validation and development of new technologies.

As a centre of expertise for Walloon gastronomy, the Smart Gastronomy Lab has put on a show of innovative products, including an edible spoon with a chocolate-hazelnut and vegetable spread, very finely sweetened. Minister Borsus also received laser-engraved macaroons in his image.

The emergence of the "gastronomic district" of the faculty

In addition to the Smart Gastronomy Lab, this was also an opportunity to salute the BeerFac project, the Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech faculty brewery, on which work began in September to establish itself in the adjoining building. These two complementary projects will complete the establishment of a "gastronomic district", which is crucial for bringing culinary sciences to the table of agronomic and life sciences.

The BeerFac brewery should be inaugurated by the end of the 2021-2022 academic year. This university project materializes the return of the production of the beers of the Abbey of Gembloux within its walls. It will be an opportunity for the student community to experiment and showcase the know-how instilled within the walls of the former Gembloux Abbey.