Will the meal pills replicate the taste of your favorite food? Because I'm not going to restaurants for their nutritious value.

I mostly go to restaurants with people to enjoy a cup of coffee over conversation. The belly-filling is incidental.

(for the sake of beautiful symmetry, I don't go to restaurants by myself..)

No way.

We've already had a huge preview into how well artificial food replacement products are received by the general public, in the form of Soylent and similar meal replacement drinks and powders.

The answer is that these products have niche demand at best, even before considering the problems they've had with quality control, negative health reactions, etc.

My own experience is that a few years ago I spent a few months living on a Soylent-like concoction of nutritional supplements . It covered all my nutritional needs and had me feeling great in some ways (just like Soylent users report), but after a while led to dreadful problems with my digestive system and mental wellbeing.

After everything I've seen and experienced, I'm very long on conventional food.

They seem to be having some issues recently.

On October 12, 2016, the company announced it would halt sales of the "Soylent Bar" due to reports of gastrointestinal illness.

On October 27, 2016, the company halted sales of Soylent Powder 1.6 as a cautionary measure.

Any scientific research to back this up ? Genuinely curious but slightly skeptical.

2000 calories -- that's a lot of pills.

The first implementation is known as "M&Ms".

Make an M&M flavored Soylent a la Dairy Queen's Blizzard and we're in business.

For me, restaurants are not about getting nutrition, they are about enjoying the food and spending a nice time with friends.

Not if you ask nutrition professionals.