Fetish Food

Posted on 12. Mar, 2009 by Kerry Banks in International

A free vasectomy from the clinic next door is one of the perks for male diners at Bangkok’s Cabbages and Condoms, the only restaurant in the world dedicated to birth control. All diners get a condom with coffee, instead of an after-dinner mint. In an adjoining gift shop, bouquets of condoms stand in vases beside T-shirts emblazoned with the message “Cabbages and Condoms: Our food is guaranteed not to cause pregnancy.” Proceeds from the sale of these items and the restaurant’s meals are given to the Population and Community Development Association, a non-profit organization founded in 1974 by Mechai Viravaidya, the former Thai Minister of Health, who has made birth control his personal crusade. And business at the bustling downtown eatery is excellent. It’s been consistently rated one of the best restaurants in Bangkok.

Cabbages and Condom caused quite a sensation when it opened in 2002, but is has since been surpassed by other more extreme fetish restaurants, which are now popping up all over the globe. Here are a few of the crazier ones.

Edible Excretions
If you happen to be in Taiwan and want to indulge in a different type of culinary experience, check out the Modern Toilet, which bills itself as the world’s first toilet themed restaurant. I’m not sure the world really needs something like this, but evidently it’s a big hit with the Chinese. The concept is simple and sickening. Diners sit on acrylic toilet seats and eat out of toilet-shaped bowls (both the Asian squat-style and the traditional Western style). Menu items include chicken curry, pasta, fried chicken and Mongolian hot pot, as well as shaved-ice desserts with names like “diarrhea with dried droppings” (chocolate), “bloody poop” (strawberry) and “green dysentery” (kiwi). Modern Toilet owner Wang Zi-wei got his idea from the Japanese robot cartoon character Jichiwawa, who loves to play with poop and swirl it on a stick. Inspired by that image, Wang began selling chocolate ice cream swirls on paper squat toilets. Customers loved them and wanted more edible excretion experiences, so he opened Modern Toilet in Tapei in 2004. The chain now has seven outlets in Taiwan, one in Hong Kong and one in Shenzhen, China.

Bombs Away
At Buns & Guns in Beirut, Lebanon, everything is about war-–from the decor and sound effects to the names of the menu items. Chefs sporting battle helmets while realistic-looking weapons and ammunition decorate the counters, and camouflage netting hangs from the ceiling. As you eat, a continuous loop of rifle fire, mortar fire and explosions plays in the background. Manager Yussef Ibrahim says that the theme reflects the mood of the city during Lebanon’s 2006 war with Israel, and that while some patrons may find it disturbing, most are amused. Diners can order a “rocket-propelled grenade” (chicken on a skewer), “Claymore” pizza, an M16 Carbine meat sandwich, a Mortar burger or a Terrorist meal (which happens to be vegetarian).

Naked Sushi
In Japanese nyotaimori literally means “female body plate.” A nude woman lies atop a platform or table dressed only with leaves in strategic places. Sushi and sashimi is served atop the model, using the leaves as serving plates. The leaves are necessary to insulate the sushi from the model’s body heat, which would warm it up and spoil its quality. The history behind this Japanese custom is muddled. Some sources quote it as a long-standing tradition; others claim it was introduced by the Yakuza gangsters. Whatever its roots, it is not openly advertised today in Japan, but a cheaper and less esoteric version is making the rounds in Tokyo. At these nyotaimori restaurants, an edible body, with dough for “skin” and sauce for “blood,” is wheeled into the room on a hospital gurney and placed upon a table. The hostess begins the meal by cutting into the body with a scalpel and then patrons dig in, operating on the body to reveal edible “organs.”

Black is Black
In Los Angeles and San Francisco, the Opaque group offers dining in the dark, literally. The entire restaurant is enveloped in complete blackness. After ordering your meal outside, you are led to your table and helped to navigate through a three-course dinner with the assistance of blind waiters. Supposedly by denying one’s sight, other senses, most notably your sense of taste, is heightened. The first pitch-black restaurant, Blindekuh (the Blind Cow), which opened in Zurich, Switzerland in 1999, had the goal of “creating jobs for the blind and handicapped people.” The concept has since spread to Paris, London and Sydney and Beijing, although at many of these places, the sighted staff wear night-vision goggles. In Beijing, the Whale Inside Dark Restaurant is not only about heightening the sense of taste, but lowering social inhibitions. It’s popular with Internet daters, who meet on matchmaking Web sites that are sprouting throughout China.

Just What the Doctor Ordered
Considering how much people complain about hospital food, it’s a minor miracle that Hospitalis is a success. Founded by three doctors, this strange restaurant in Riga, Latvia, is completely white, looks clinical and has loads of medical equipment for the purpose of decoration. The bar resembles an old pharmacy, while the drinks come in beakers and test tubes and the food in operating-room dishes. Patients are attended to by leggy nurses sporting red wigs, skimpy starched uniforms and stethoscopes. Your table could either be a gynecological consultation bed or a trolley. As an added bonus, customers can be tied up in straight jackets.

Tiny Portions
Dwarves of the East is the name of a popular café in the fashionable area of Nasr City in Cairo’s suburbs. The gimmick here is the staff—all of them are midgets. The café’s owner, Ahmad Al Kilani, no stickler for political correctness, was prompted to open the establishment after a friend of his complained that he had been sacked from his job as a mechanic because he was too short. As Al Kilani said in an interview, “I call the café Dwarves of the East to highlight the fact that these people are part of our world and society.”

Soviet Kitsch
St. Petersburg’s contribution to restaurant madness is Zov Ilicha, loosely translated as Lenin’s Mating Call. Only a few years ago, opening a joint like this would have meant a stint in prison. Now it is considered a must-see. Statues of Joseph Stalin, Felix Dzerzhinsky and Vladimir Lenin can be found on the walls and windowsills, and even hanging upside down from the mirror ceiling. One of the bar’s two rooms, which are both painted in red and black tones, also contain a few unsavoury paintings and various phallic parallels with the Kremlin towers, while TV screens play speeches by Soviet leaders interspersed with soft porn scenes. The dining hall is divided into two sections–Soviet room and the other, anti-Soviet room. The Soviet room has Lenin portraits on the wall and offers a classic Soviet menu with the local Russian favourites. The anti-Soviet room has parody posters and references to liberalization, sex and drugs and offers bourgeois dishes such as fondue and crab. The waitresses are dressed in sexy Communist Party Pioneer uniforms with naughty red high heels, red fishnets and “hammer and sickle” garters.

Haute Cuisine
Anyone with a feat of heights or a weak bladder is advised to avoid Dinner in the Sky, a Belgian-based based novelty restaurant which uses a crane to hoist its diners, table, and waitstaff 50 metres into the air. The structure can accomodate 22 guests, who are strapped into leather seats that are secured to a dining table. The centre of the table has a walking platform that allows room to serve food, take photos, conduct a meeting or do a product presentation. Since its founding in Brussels in 2007, the concept has spread to other parts of the planet, including Las Vegas, where a Dinner in the Sky had its grand opening on New Years Eve 2008. With local officials’ blessings, the platform can be transported to just about anywhere the crane can maneuver. The restaurant belongs firmly in the special-occasion category, however. The cost for eight hours is about $11,500—not including catering.

Six Feet Under
Want to dine inside the world’s largest coffin? Welcome to Eternity, a restaurant in Truskavets, Ukraine, near the Polish border. The restaurant is a windowless, 20-metre-long coffin, six metres wide and six metres high. The decorations correspond to the theme–-funeral wreaths, black shrouded walls and human-sized coffins. Consistent with the chilling atmosphere, a single candle burns on each table. 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.” The idea of opening the eatery came from the director of a local undertaking firm, who believes this is a great opportunity to attract more customers as well as more tourists.

Photo Credits:

#1: americandigest.org

#2: saynotocrack.com

#3: flickr.com

#4: odditycentral.com

#5: wordpress.com

Tags: Bangkok, Beirut, Brussels, Cairo, Culinary Travel, Japan, L.A., New York, San Francisco, St. Petersburgh, Taiwan, The Ukraine, Travel Trivia