The Best Restaurant In Austin Doesn’t Exist

Ethos_atx shares the kind of food Instagram was made for. Food so creative (think dinosaur-shaped croissants, burger bouquets, et al) its 74,000+ followers almost seems small.

Ethos looks every bit like the next big foodie destination in Austin. Reservations? Just a click away. Merchandise? Of course, they’ve got that covered.

But there’s one small problem: Ethos_atx isn’t real. Not the food, not the chef, not even the restaurant. Every post, from its glossy culinary creations to its smiling chefs, is the work of AI.

Yet, one year after launching, they seem to be posting more–and attracting more wanna-eat customers–than ever. Ethos’ “general manager”, Giuseppe Fusilli, even claims to be available “24/7” on their website.

With no tangible “goal” in mind, this playful deception raises an interesting question: what happens when a restaurant thrives entirely on digital content, offering nothing “real”? And perhaps more importantly, does this kind of…dare I say, creativity…have the power to impact real-world businesses and consumer trust?

Some followers are clearly in on the joke. Others do not realize that the entire operation is a thing of, in Ethos’ own words, “unreal flavors”. And posts regularly rack up thousands of likes and comments.

While the page’s administrators are clearly making some money from merchandise sales (the ‘I Dined At Ethos’ t-shirt is a personal favorite), it’s hard to pin down the exact business model. Is this just a social media experiment or a more pointed commentary on how easily consumers can be fooled?

Despite being a playful, slightly mischievous example, Ethos looks to be part of a much larger trend. AI-generated content is making serious inroads in the food industry, and not always in ways that consumers realize. Restaurants and food brands are increasingly using AI to craft highly realistic—and often highly unrealistic—images of dishes that may or may not exist in the physical world, with some going so far as to generate entirely fictitious menus for ghost kitchens (see: restaurants that exist only for delivery).

In a world where visuals often carry more weight than the actual experience, this could create a slippery slope. It’s not just about AI-generated food being overly stylized—it’s about the risk of consumer deception. And Ethos isn’t the first to shine a light on the issue.

In 2018, a former VICE colleague famously managed to turn his backyard shed into the top-rated restaurant on TripAdvisor, purely through fake reviews. In the same vein, Ethos is exploiting the weaknesses of our digital economy–namely, the ease with which content can be manipulated and the trust systems that can be gamed.

Either way, it’s working; people are engaging, and Ethos_atx has built a loyal following around with more than pixels and code. For now, Ethos_atx remains an entertaining curiosity, a glimpse into how far AI has come in replicating our world—or, at least, our Instagram feeds.