I’m all for a unique dining experience, but I’m not entirely sure I have the stomach for all of these!!
Note: Some of these no longer exist!
1. Twin Stars Diner
This diner, once located in Moscow, is now closed, as of 2024. But it was a very unique place! It was staffed entirely by sets of twins, identical twins. The twins wore identical outfits and worked as a duo at their job within the restaurant. The owner was inspired to create the diner after seeing the 1964 Soviet film Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors. In the movie, Olya looks in the mirror and sees another version of herself (named Yalo) in an alternate universe. But while the twins them is unusual, it isn’t a one-of-a-kind.
2. Twins Restaurant
in 1994, twins Lisa and Debbie Ganz opened Twins Restaurant with over 30 pairs of identical twins. Like the diner, they wore identical outfits, and protocol stated that if one twin was ill, the other had to miss work, too. They took the double theme farther, with double-sided business cards, twin bar stools, and a centerpiece of a double helix DNA strand. Instead of mints with the check, the checks came with Doublemint gum. This restaurant is also closed, as of 2000.
3. Please Don’t Tell
This is a cocktail bar in New York City, a speakeasy-style establishment. It’s located in a hidden space beside a hot dog shop (Crif Dogs). Inside the hot dog place, there is a phone booth, the back wall of which serves as the door into the bar, completely unmarked. The bar itself is small, with a capacity for no more than 50 or less patrons.
4. Dinner in the Sky
This restaurant is in Belgium, where diners are strapped into their seats and then levitated up to 180 feet around a dining table over the city. They offer different dining packages, with a large staff of chefs, each offering different menus. As part of the package, you choose your chef, and then rise to the occasion… pun intended. This same experience is now available across Europe, Australia, the US, South Africa, India, Dubai, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia.
5. Onkel Taa
This is an odd combination of restaurant, museum, and spa, located in Italy. The museum part of it hosts one of the largest collections in the world of items related to the Habsburg Dynasty within Germany. It also has a sizable collection of fossilized snails and mollusks. The restaurant menu is also highly inspired by snails and mollusks, with virtually every item on it involving them in some way. In addition, there is actually a snail-breeding facility on the property. The owner is purportedly obsessed with snails, hence the preponderance. As for the spa, along with a few expected services, there is also a mineral spring, which is claimed to have healing powers. The spa also boasts of being the oldest in the Tyrol area, since 1403.
6. Hajime Restaurant Gastronomique
This is actually a conglomeration of 6 different dining experiences located in Osaka, Japan. Among the experiences offered are “installation art,” in which food is entwined with spatial art. “Singularity” uses AI, androids, and robots to serve traditional Japanese food, often dressed as samurai.
7. Carton King
This is one establishment in a large cardboard themed creative park located in Taiwan. All of the furnishings are made of cardboard, to include plates, cutlery, and serving pieces. For doubting customers, the larger employees love to demonstrate its strength, pulling out a chair and having a seat, even with a waitress on their laps to add to the weight. When you’re done eating, you can see all kinds of exhibits, including a paper art garden and a working cardboard train.
8. Ithaa Undersea Restaurant
If you’re ever in the Maldives, you can have your dinner 5 meters beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean. There is room for only 14 diners at a time. The restaurant gives full view to the reef around you, to see the reef sharks, turtles, and fish that call it home.
9. Airplane Restaurant
Located in Colorado Springs, you can dine inside a 1953 Boeing KC-97 tanker, a refueler. In 2002, it was revamped and turned into a restaurant. 42 “passengers” can dine at a time inside the plane, complete with museum-level photos, memorabilia, and other artifacts.
10. Modern Toilet
This restaurant is in Taipei, Taiwan, a three-story space that is themed just as it sounds. Repurposed plungers hang from the ceiling with lighting shaped like… poo. The chairs are inoperable toilets. The food is served largely in miniature toilets, drinks in miniature urinals. The restaurant’s owner opened after the wild success of his ice cream shop that served swirled ice cream in mini toilets.
Nope. Just nope.
11. Cabbages and Condoms
Yes, you read that right. The restaurant, located in Bangkok, was created in order to support and promote education and understanding in the area of family planning. The restaurant uses at least some of their profits to support the Population and Community Development Association (PDA). On Mondays and Wednesdays, there are also shows with some of their meals, featuring Thai Classical Dancers.
12. Witches in Britches
This is a kitschy musical theater dining experience in Melbourne, Australia. It’s a full-service restaurant with a witchy/Halloween-esque theme. Some of the shows: My Big Fat Witch Wedding, The Witches of Ox, Crazy Rich Witches. They have a sister venue called Draculas, and 18+ caberet eatery.
13. Treepod Dining
This is a restaurant at the Soneva Kiri Eco Resort in Thailand. Diners are suspended in small bamboo bowls among the treetops of the rainforest with a view of the Gulf of Thailand. Each pod seats up to four people, with a zipline for the waiter to deliver food and wine.
Beautiful, but no. Not this girl!
Some of those are troubling. I imagine it would be hard to recruit twins for the twins restaurant. Smaller population and all that.
These are weird! #8 kind of spooks me because I saw that movie MENU. #4 I don’t want to be up that high for anything. We had a hidden speakeasy here with a fake storefront and you have to put a coin in a coke machine and another door would open. Lush Lounge. Toilets? Nah. Twins sound like fun.
The ones with height and below the ocean would be a no-go for me. Also the toilet one! Eww. These are weird! What a great list.