Ever wanted to visit an innovation centre where experts pore over recipes, techniques and ingredients all day every day? Now you can, and you don’t even have to leave home.

September saw the opening of Puratos’ Virtual Innovation Centre, where you can take a virtual tour, chat with experts and browse a database of recipes (there’s more than 180 recipes in their database).

The virtual space offers live chats with international technical advisors, but only at specific times (check online for the live chat schedule). If you have a question that can’t wait for a session, you can try the virtual advisor, which let’s you choose from pre-programmed options to diagnose your problem.

Here’s one we tried: