Novelty Restaurants

Just read in the Star yesterday about this novelty restaurant in Melbourne called “The Dark Side”. The gimmick here is that everything in this eatery is pitch dark. The waiters are dressed in black and wear night vision goggles. Oh, yeah. Great idea. They could be serving you beef infested with maggots or the cockfight loser chicken and you wouldn’t even know any better. And the worse thing is that you’ll probably come out of the place with gravy stains and all over your shirt.

And how much would a place like charge you? Not at cost price, I can bet you. With all the savings they make on the electricity bills and the time in making the food look presentable (they probably serve your drinks in those free Colgate mugs), you’d think the place would be as cheap as McDonalds. At least in McDonalds, you can SEE if the meat is fresh, not some roadkill scraped off the PLUS highway.

OK, enough badmouthing the place, I haven’t even been to there before, let’s give the benefit of the doubt.

There’s another novelty restaurant, this one is the no-hands restaurant in Bangkok. Here’s the deal, you don’t have to use your hands to eat at this place, two girls will sit on each side of you, and serve you with chopsticks. You just have to tell them what you want, they’ll feed you with it.

This is all fine, at least if you can speak Thai. If you can’t, well, I can imagine what happens. “Oh, did you say ‘more red chillies’? OK, here goes, its burning hot, mind you!” “Hey, if you’re not going to tell me what you want to eat, I’m NOT FEEDING YOU!”

Or if you happen to get two health freak naggers feeding you, too bad. “No more fried chicken for you! Eat some broccoli! And pig’s intestines. It’s good for you.” “You know, you must try this Atkins diet I’m on. No red or white meat. This cow died unnecessarily. Here, have more asparagus stew.”

Or if you didn’t tip your girls well the last time you were here, they would probably go like, “Oh silly me, did I just spill this cup of steaming hot coffee onto your crotch?” “Oh look! This sushi I’ve been feeding you isn’t really dead yet!”

Myself, I’ll stick to roadside mamak food and hawker stall wantan mee.