Dining Experiences That Are Truly Terrifying
Dining is supposed to be adventurous... but what about terrifying? If you're looking for some truly adventurous dining that delivers an adrenaline rush with your main course, then you'll want to hit up these eateries. From spooky in a fun sorta way to straight up "please don't let me die" terror, the restaurants on this list offer anything but your run-of-the-mill night out to dinner.
Some of these establishments you could consider casual dining, but don't even think about calling them boring. While they do play into the gimmick factor that has become so popular in the restaurant industry these days, each of them delivers a meal in a unique atmosphere that you'll be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. Diner be warned, though. These restaurants offer some truly scary dining experiences that include everything from vampires and convicts to the possibility of dining with ghosts from the Titanic.
Nox
If snapping photos of your meal to share on Instagram is half the fun of your dining experience, eating at Nox in Singapore may not be for you. Not because the dishes aren't beautifully plated, but because you'll be eating in complete darkness and won't be able to see a thing. The restaurant's website describes the experience as "a culinary journey through taste, smell, touch and sound." While the "culinary journey" is certainly going to be out of the norm, that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be a totally enjoyable one.
A review of the restaurant on Delishably is peppered with descriptions one isn't probably looking for in a dining experience such as "PURE fear" and "state of panic." Utensils are available, but considering no one can see much of anything, ditching table manners completely and using one's hands seems like the way to go. As for the food, Nox's chef, Desmond Lee, has created a menu that has elevated the restaurant to become one of the standouts in Singapore. Unfortunately, you'll have no way of knowing what's on your plate until you somehow get it into your mouth. Diners will just have to overcome their fear of the unknown before they can truly allow themselves to enjoy what's on their plate.
Fortezza Medicea
Lots of restaurant patrons enjoy a little bit of small talk with their waiter and learning about their background. You're probably not going to learn that your waiter has a rap sheet that includes racketeering or even murder at most restaurants, though. Then again, most restaurants aren't smack in the middle of a working prison. Armed guards? Check. Strict security check-in? Check. A head chef who's serving life for murder but can cook up a seriously good plate of pasta? You bet.
Tables are booked weeks in advance for this restaurant located inside an old chapel behind Italian prison walls 60-feet high. The restaurant only welcomes the public eight nights a year, and the occasion is a special one not just for the guests, but the prisoners as well, who look at the work as a chance to interact with the public. An inmate named Vito who is serving a life sentence for murder told CBS News that it's a "whiff of freedom." It's only natural to feel a little leery about dining while surrounded by hardened prisoners, but prison director, Maria Grazia Giampiccolo pointed out that the guests usually relax and forget about the armed guards rather quickly. Of course, if the food isn't to your liking at this joint, it's probably in your best interest not to tell the chef.
Dinner in the Sky
Sure the food may be great and the cocktails might be delicious, but the real star for this globe-trotting restaurant concept isn't on the menu. Patrons who are brave enough are strapped into chairs around a rectangular dining table that's then raised by a crane 180 feet into the air for a view unlike any other. It's the kind of unique — and obviously terrifying for those with a fear of heights — dining experience that seems like it was custom built for tourist hot spots like Las Vegas and Dubai.
Over the last decade, the concept has made the rounds in more than 40 countries, hosting some 5,000 dining events, cocktail mixers, and weddings. While guests are treated to the same service they might find at a four-star restaurant (only with a better view, of course) there are some, um, awkward differences. If somebody at the table has to use the restroom, the entire table must be lowered to the ground while everyone waits for their fellow diner to do their business and return before going back up. Needless to say, if you have an opportunity to use the restroom before taking your seat, you had best take it.
Vampire Café
Tokyo might be over 5,000 miles away from Transylvania, but Count Dracula would feel right at home in this spooky restaurant in the hip Ginza neighborhood. One might think that a place called the Vampire Café would be in some centuries-old castle or at least a sketchy basement. Nope, it's actually on the 7th floor of an ordinary building. The inside is anything but normal though, and the creepy cafe has a seriously ghoulish gothic vibe going for it. Once inside, patrons are immersed in a vampire haven that includes dim lighting, blood red walls, a healthy amount of skulls, and a coffin centerpiece. Even the restrooms have blood-splattered mirrors and sinks to add to the undead allure.
While virgin's blood might not be on the menu, there are savory and refreshing items sure to satisfy any bloodsucker. Customers can order cocktails with names like "The Bloody Rose" and "Iron Maiden" while they wait for their upside down cross toast with salmon mousse. The restaurant boasts a solid four stars on Yelp. Just don't expect to find any garlic in your food.
Five Fishermen Restaurant
On the surface, there's really nothing terrifying or creepy about this seafood restaurant located in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It's been open since the 1970s and other than the possibility of indulging in too many raw oysters, your meal should be a delight. Talk to the wait staff about its history though and you'll learn that the popular restaurant once functioned as a morgue. Not just any morgue, however, but one that prepared the bodies for numerous victims from the Titanic disaster in 1912. The morgue saw a second wave of victims just five years later when the Halifax explosion left 2,000 people dead after two ships collided.
Not long after, employees of the restaurant began noticing supernatural activity that has continued over the decades. "Things happen in this building," restaurant manager Wallace Fraser told the Toronto Sun. "I've not only heard stories. I've been witness to some of the strange things that happen here." Wallace swears that even visitors who know nothing of the building's history have seen its otherworldly guests. "We have a long chain of hauntings and stories," he added.
The New Lucky Restaurant
Any connoisseur of horror films will tell you that building a house or business on a burial ground is a bad idea. The owner of the New Lucky Restaurant in Ahmedabad, India seems to have avoided any bad juju, because his restaurant has been going strong for 60 years. Owner Krishnan Kutti could have merely paved over the graves where his restaurant was to go, but rather than disturb the dead, he built his eatery around the burial sites. Patrons enjoy their meals in booths that sit right beside graves with only steel bars between them.
Kutti doesn't know who the graves belong to, but believes that they date back to the 16th century and bring his business and customers good blessings rather than bad. "By coming here and seeking their blessings the entire day goes well," one customer told ZoominTV. Kutti seems to realize that because his restaurant is part cemetery it has a certain novelty appeal and he shows his pride by cleaning the graves each day before placing fresh flowers on them.
Modern Toilet
Eating your meal out of a toilet bowl might seem like one of the gross stunts from Fear Factor, but it's also the idea behind a popular Japanese cafe. (Oh Japan, is there any kooky restaurant gimmick you won't try?) Believe it or not, people are paying to slurp their soba noodles out of toilet bowls. Thankfully, the toilet bowls have only ever been used for food, but still — eww.
Modern Toilet's whole shtick is bathroom-themed with light fixtures that look like plungers and bathroom tile lining the walls. Surviving a meal without having to sprint for the bathroom, however, seems to be an issue of mind over matter. "The key to getting through this, I soon realized, was to not think," said National Geographic writer Meaghan Mulholland. That's probably easier said than done though, when your dessert order of chocolate frozen yogurt shows up in a porcelain commode and looks a little too much like the poop emoji.
Chirston Café
If you happen to be in Tokyo with your overtly religious Catholic relatives, you might want to steer clear of Chirston Café. In terms of themed restaurants looking to give you a case of the heebie jeebies, this place is on par with the Vampire Café. The big difference here is the number of crucifixes. The interior of the restaurant is both beautiful and creepy, with its exquisite chandeliers and stained glass.
Even if you're dining alone or with a friend, you're likely to feel that you're never truly alone because of numerous statues of the Virgin Mary and Jesus watching over customers. If a statue of a bleeding Christ and gargoyles lurking from above isn't enough to have you looking for other dinner options, then stick around for the after party. The place is rumored to occasionally host all-night fetish parties for guests looking to take their sacrilegious experience to the next level.
Robot Magic Restaurant
If your anxiety creeps up every time your waiter tries to make banter while dining out, this Shanghai restaurant may calm your nerves. Then again, it could just remind you that the rise of the machines is on its way since the place is staffed by machines (although humans are there to help, when needed). Yes, the Robot Magic Restaurant doesn't rely on magic, but technology to serve its customers with robotic waiters taking orders and delivering food — sorta.
As for how efficient the robot waiters are, well, let's just say any tips they earn are probably from sheer novelty appeal and not actual service. "The robots also break down, wrote Paul Mozur while visiting the restaurant for The New York Times. "Three times during an hour lunch, a waiter had to lean a robot on its side and take a blowtorch to the undercarriage to burn out food and trash caught in its axles." Yikes!
Still, if the thought of a world one day ruled by artificial intelligence gives you the shivers, you should probably avoid this glimpse into the future.