If you’re like me, dining out is an experience unto itself. The food, the ambience, your fellow diners, all of these items combine to make eating out a memorable experience. Yet there are some restaurants, where the ambience overtakes the food, where the food is actually secondary to the experience. These are truly some of the most bizarrest restaurants in the world:
Dans Le Noir – Paris, Moscow, London
Dans le Noir means “in the dark” in French, and that is exactly how you eat at this restaurant which can be found in Moscow, Paris, and London. According to one review: “Nothing can prepare you for the uniqueness of Dans Le Noir. It works like this; you meet in the tall-ceilinged entrance bar, put your phones and anything else that might emit light in a locker, then order from the ‘surprise’ menu where you don’t know what you’ll get.
Then you’re led through three sets of black drapes and to your table. You can’t see a thing. Nothing. Leaving you to rely wholly on the remaining four senses, and the blind waiter or waitress assigned to you. You’ve never tasted food this way before, that’s for sure. And because you can’t see who’s next to you, everyday judgments and fears are removed and chatting to your neighbors becomes irresistible.”
Eternity Restaurant – Poland
The coffin restaurant, called Eternity, is the work of a funeral parlor in the town of Truskavets near the Polish border. The undertakers hope that their restaurant will be confirmed as the world’s biggest coffin, attracting tourists to a region best known for its mineral-rich bathing waters.
Morbid diners can browse the funeral paraphernalia before ordering from a menu that includes “Nine Day” and “Forty Day” salads – named after local mourning rituals – and an ominous-sounding dish called “Let’s meet in paradise”. Single candles on the tables contribute to the funereal mood.
Dinner In The Sky – Brussels
Suffer from vertigo? Then this restaurant is definitely NOT for you! Dinner In The Sky is for people who expect more from their restaurants than four concrete walls and a solid floor. Instead, diners perch around a massive table, which is suspended from a crane high up in the air. It sounds completely insane, but as the most unusual – and entirely legal – way of getting high over dinner, it is the new must-do experience for the super-rich and adventure-hungry who yearn for something a little more extreme at mealtimes.
Although based in Belgium, the “restaurant” can be driven to any destination in the world. There have already been dining events in Paris and Brussels, while New York and Niagara Falls are on the agenda.
Modern Toilet – Taiwan
While most restaurants probably prefer that you not think about the final destination of the food you’re eating, imagining you’re unable to avoid drawing parallels with their product, Modern Toilet Restaurant revels in the concept. You might think it’s totally gross, but as the site says, “In an age where creative marketing is king, even feces can be turned into gold!”
The website chronicles the chain’s story. The Modern Toilet legend began where all great ideas begin – on the porcelain throne. The unnamed soon-to-be-entrepreneur was struck by inspiration and soon opened the first location under the demure name ‘Marton Restaurant’.
Serving only desserts with a decidedly fecal look turned out to be more exciting to the general public than it may have been presumed to be, and soon Modern Toilet was born. Every customer sits on a stylish acrylic toilet (lid down) designed with images of roses, seashells or Renaissance paintings.
Everyone dines at a glass table with a sink underneath. The servers bring your meal atop a mini toilet bowl, you sip drinks from your own plastic urinal (a souvenir), and soft-swirl ice cream arrives for dessert atop a dish shaped like a squat toilet.
Nyotaimori Restaurants – Japan
Nyotaimori, “female body presentation”, is a service allowing restaurant customers to eat from the skin of a naked woman. Apart from her crotch, which is usually covered with some kind of garnish, the model’s modesty depends on the (temporary) position of the food on her body.
Aside from the obvious attractions of salivating over a nubile body, it is claimed that nyotaimori warms the food to body temperature. Apparantly, this allows the diner to focus on the texture and taste, rather than its temperature. R-iiight.
Devil Island Prison Restaurant -China
The owner of the Devil Island restaurants in China reportedly wanted to scare people away from a life of crime by showing them just how rough prison life can be – through a jail-themed restaurant where you’re led to your table in handcuffs and served fried coffin-shaped bread. Each table is surrounded by rusting prison bars, and you’re served by waiters in black-and-white striped uniforms.
Dinner in a Hospital – Taipei
In Taipei, the line: ‘Do you like hospital food?’ doesn’t constitute a threat but an invitation to dinner. Your surreal experience starts with the name, D.S. Music Restaurant, which in no way hints at what’s actually inside. At the DS hospital-themed restaurant, customers order ‘medicine’ from a menu, which is then served from a drip at the table.
Wait staff dressed in nurse uniforms push you to your table in wheelchairs, where your drinks are served from an IV-like contraption hanging from the ceiling. The ‘nurses’ ask trivia questions, and if you get them right, you’re rewarded with shots of a tasty drink squirted into your mouth with a syringe. It only gets stranger from there. Once you’re done eating, a female staff member in a deranged ballerina costume dances on your table.
Rising Sun Anger Release Bar – China
It’s a tough, stressful world out there, and there’s only so much you can take before you just have to let out some anger and frustration. If using restaurant staff as punching bags sounds like a good anger management tactic to you, check out the Rising Sun Anger Release Bar in Nanjing City, China where customers pay a fee to beat up staff, scream and break glasses.
The staff, which dons protective gear, will dress up to resemble the person you’d really like to physically assault. If all that doesn’t work, customers can also receive psychological counselling. The bar is said to be especially popular with Chinese women who work in the service industry.
A380 In-Flight Kitchen – Japan
Imagine boarding a plane without security checks or even tickets and more importantly, there’s more than just fish or chicken for dinner. A380 In-Flight Kitchen is named after the largest passenger airliner in the world. The restaurant looks and functions much like the Airbus it’s named after — though it only has one floor.
“Passengers” sit in “first class,” “business class,” or “economy class.” Large comfortable blue chairs with headrests covered with white headrest covers emblazoned with the “airline’s” logo ensure optimum comfort for those long-haul meals. Stewardesses are dressed neatly in uniforms and dash back and forth with trays of “airplane food” or beverages on metal trolleys. A line of oval-shaped windows run along one side and look out onto a white “sky.” The a la carte and set menus include foie gras filet mignon, vanilla lamb, dory and German pig knuckle as well as chicken and pasta. All meals are served in the same plastic trays found on airplanes.
Undersea restaurant – Maldives
For those of you that have a fear of diving there is an alternate way of experiencing the sea life, vibrant coral and the crystal blue waters of the Indian Ocean. Why not kill two birds with one stone and take in the breath- taking panoramic under water views while enjoying the delightful Maldivian cuisine?
Ithaa, which means pearl in Dhivehi, is a mostly acrylic undersea restaurant secured five metres below sea level at the Conrad Maldives Rangali Island in Rangalifinolhu, Maldives.
The five-by-nine meter restaurant has a capacity of fourteen people and is encased in R-Cast acrylic which is a transparent acrylic roof offering 270° panoramic view. Ithaa’s entrance is a spiral staircase in a thatched pavilion at the end of a jetty.
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