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1. Weird places to eat
Cheers today, gone tomorrow.
In a restaurant that disappears the next day
There’s an old Finnish proverb: “Show me a person who loves to cook and I’ll show you a restaurant waiting to happen.”
OK, so it’s not really a proverb, but it could be. Four times a year, Finland throws what they call “restaurant day.” Anybody who wants to can open a one-day, pop-up restaurant, inspections and permits be damned.
Originating in Helsinki, the first restaurant day drew 40 takers who created restaurants, cafes and bars that, like Brigadoon, disappeared the next day. The fifth restaurant day is on tap May 19, 2012.
Now you know what it's like to be a clam.
In a fish bowl
In the Republic of Maldives, a country of 1,200 Indian Ocean islands, guests can eat in an all-glass undersea restaurant.
Getting reservations to this human fish bowl is tricky (only 12 peeps per seating), not to mention over-the-top expensive. Lunch starts at US$195 and the reason the waiters wear sunglasses is not to be cool, but because undersea glare causes unattractive squinting.
But where else can you dine five meters below sea level as the Indian Ocean’s exotic and brilliantly hued sea life swims above your head?
Ithaa, Conrad Maldives Rangali Island, Maldives, www.conradmaldives.com
Well it's only going to end up there anyway.
On a toilet seat
To pee or not to pee. That is the question at Modern Toilet, a chain of restaurants launched in Taiwan that, at last report, had leaked into Hong Kong.
Guests belly up to glass-covered bathroom sinks, sit on what we can only hope are unused toilet seats and enjoy such dishes as shabu shabu in miniature toilet bowls. Souvenir plastic urinals (got lemonade?) go home with customers.
Ex-banker Wang Zi-Wei who started in Kaohsiung with ice cream shaped like diaper deposits is living proof that P.T. Barnum’s “sucker” adage is still in effect.
Various locations in Taiwan and Hong Kong; www.moderntoilet.com.tw/en
Dead hungry?
In a giant casket
A 20-meter casket in Truskavets, Ukraine regularly made lists of weird restaurants as well it should.
With nary a window, nothing but a solitary candle per table (to create that locked in feel) and meals named for Ukrainian mourning rituals, this eatery built by a local funeral parlor was nothing if not strange.
Unfortunately, the local Catholic Church objected (perchance it was hogging too much fame), so the humongous casket was at last report on its way to Moscow.
If anyone should find the missing world’s largest casket, please report in. RIP, old friend.
Cheers today, gone tomorrow.
In a restaurant that disappears the next day
There’s an old Finnish proverb: “Show me a person who loves to cook and I’ll show you a restaurant waiting to happen.”
OK, so it’s not really a proverb, but it could be. Four times a year, Finland throws what they call “restaurant day.” Anybody who wants to can open a one-day, pop-up restaurant, inspections and permits be damned.
Originating in Helsinki, the first restaurant day drew 40 takers who created restaurants, cafes and bars that, like Brigadoon, disappeared the next day. The fifth restaurant day is on tap May 19, 2012.
Now you know what it's like to be a clam.
In a fish bowl
In the Republic of Maldives, a country of 1,200 Indian Ocean islands, guests can eat in an all-glass undersea restaurant.
Getting reservations to this human fish bowl is tricky (only 12 peeps per seating), not to mention over-the-top expensive. Lunch starts at US$195 and the reason the waiters wear sunglasses is not to be cool, but because undersea glare causes unattractive squinting.
But where else can you dine five meters below sea level as the Indian Ocean’s exotic and brilliantly hued sea life swims above your head?
Ithaa, Conrad Maldives Rangali Island, Maldives, www.conradmaldives.com
Well it's only going to end up there anyway.
On a toilet seat
To pee or not to pee. That is the question at Modern Toilet, a chain of restaurants launched in Taiwan that, at last report, had leaked into Hong Kong.
Guests belly up to glass-covered bathroom sinks, sit on what we can only hope are unused toilet seats and enjoy such dishes as shabu shabu in miniature toilet bowls. Souvenir plastic urinals (got lemonade?) go home with customers.
Ex-banker Wang Zi-Wei who started in Kaohsiung with ice cream shaped like diaper deposits is living proof that P.T. Barnum’s “sucker” adage is still in effect.
Various locations in Taiwan and Hong Kong; www.moderntoilet.com.tw/en
Dead hungry?
In a giant casket
A 20-meter casket in Truskavets, Ukraine regularly made lists of weird restaurants as well it should.
With nary a window, nothing but a solitary candle per table (to create that locked in feel) and meals named for Ukrainian mourning rituals, this eatery built by a local funeral parlor was nothing if not strange.
Unfortunately, the local Catholic Church objected (perchance it was hogging too much fame), so the humongous casket was at last report on its way to Moscow.
If anyone should find the missing world’s largest casket, please report in. RIP, old friend.