Reverse micelles (RMs) are nanometer-sized aggregates of surfactants containing encapsulated water molecules as inner cores within a bulk nonpolar solvent. With special confined aqueous cores, RMs have emerged as a useful technique with a variety of applications in food science; however still lacking a comprehensive review in the subject area. This paper aims to critically review the research on the applications of RMs in food science, which allow us to better understand its current status, limits and potential. The current applications of RMs in food science were reviewed, including food protein extraction, simultaneous extraction of oils and proteins, utilization and development of effective antioxidants, separation and purification of enzymes, fabrication of enzyme-immobilized magnetic nanoparticles, and enrichment of food-derived components for analysis and quantification. The challenges and future perspectives were further discussed. The major applications of RMs in food science are extraction and purification of proteins and enzymes. The solutions to overcome the challenges were proposed, such as construction of effective RMs system by more biocompatible surfactants and apolar solvents, implementing continuous extraction, and complete removal of residual surfactants from the end products. Future research on expanding the application areas was directed, for instance, as a separation method to fractionate bioactive molecules, as a model system to explore the behaviors of bioactive molecules at cellular level and further illustrate the bioactive mechanism, and as potential nanocarriers for delivering food-derived bioactive compounds. Overall, RMs technique shows promises as a powerful strategy in food science. •RMs have confined water cores encapsulated by surfactants within nonpolar solvent.•RMs technique is mainly used in food science for extraction of protein and enzyme.•Designing RMs using biocompatible surfactant and apolar solvent is required.•Research on expanding the application areas of RMs in food science was suggested.•RMs technique has great potential to be widely utilized in food science.