At Eatsa, a new restaurant in San Francisco’s Embarcadero neighborhood, diners are deliberately estranged from their food. It’s a far cry from locavore mania, based on visceral connection to the land, in which diners want to taste the dirt and learn about the hands that tended the crops. At this fully automated restaurant, there’s very little transparency. Diners order via in-store iPads, and their food pops up behind a window. SFGate explains:

Not a human in sight, though there is a team of about five or six back-of-house kitchen staff (or as I like to imagine, magical elves) who are hidden from view and prepare the food.

It’s not quite the first of its kind. A national cupcake chain has an ATM that dispenses sugary confections. A Shanghai vending machine pours out cups of ramen.

This sleek, streamlined concept—and the instant gratification it offers—seem so attuned to the whims of the on-demand economy. But actually the concept harkens back to a midcentury idea.