When naked dining concept Bunyadi first opened in London, in 2016, it seemed like a hilariously good idea. In its first months it accrued a waiting list of 46,000 wanting to converse nude over cocktails and candles in the luxury spa-meets-restaurant. However, eventually numbers started to dwindle – not enough nudists in the capital – and the restaurant has now closed.
Feminists, get ready to roll your eyes: a bar in Japan named My Place hit headlines in 2017 for offering discounts based on how high female customers’ heels were. Discounts at the watering hole located in the Hilton, Osaka, started at 10% for those wearing two-inch heels, while those suffering in six-inch heels got the highest discount of 40%.
One of the worst examples of customer service in recent years comes from a Peter Chang restaurant in Virginia. When diners questioned why rice was brought in one bowl rather than in individual bowls, things got awkward with staff. The waiters typed insults onto their bill including personal comments about what the customers were wearing. The manager said the comments were a joke and meant to be deleted, while four employees were fired over the incident.
It’s appalling that such a place was allowed to exist, but in Bandung, Indonesia there used to be a Nazi-themed café. Named Soldaten Kaffee after a restaurant in Paris that was popular with German soldiers in the Second World War, it had paintings of Hitler, Nazi memorabilia, staff wearing Nazi uniforms and quotes from Hitler on the wall. It claimed it wasn’t pro Nazi, but exploring Hitler and Nazis as pop culture. In 2017, it finally shut down.
California restaurant Sweet Dixie Kitchen got caught out in 2017 after an online reviewer posted that the restaurant’s fried chicken actually came from fast food chain Popeyes. The reviewer spotted boxes of the chain’s chicken being brought into the restaurant, after which it admitted using Popeyes’ chicken in their £9.28 ($12) chicken and waffle dish. Unrepentant, the restaurant then went on to sell T-shirts which said #PopeyesGate.
Misogynistic marketing campaigns don't get much worse than the one run by Russian fast food spot Dvijok, which briefly gave discounts to women based on their bra size. “Who said that we don’t have touching offers?”, the advert read. Well-endowed ladies received the biggest savings, with DD cup women getting 50% off.
Wooden boards might look great in a photo, but one restaurant learned the hard way that they can be unhygienic. Ibrahims Grill and Steak House in Birmingham, England, was fined £50,000 by the city council after customers alleged they got food poisoning after eating at the restaurant. The inspectors said the wooden boards could not be properly cleaned and were the source of the outbreak.
Last year saw plates replaced by everything from boards to slates, with presentation techniques becoming increasingly bizarre. Welsh café Munchies was one of many that were slated after serving a full English breakfast in a jar. After receiving abuse online, the restaurant hit back: “If you don’t want your breakfast in a jar, please don’t abuse us on Twitter. Just ask for a plate!”
In 2011, a now-closed Honolulu restaurant, Keoni by Keo’s, raised eyebrows by charging non-English speaking customers a 15% gratuity. The restaurant said it added the charge because foreign tourists were unfamiliar with American gratuities and were not tipping waiters. This was explained clearly in small print at the bottom of the menu, though we're not sure how helpful the message was to non-English speakers.
If you’ve ever dreamed of being harshly judged by a panel of cosmetic surgeons to qualify for free meals, head for the Jeju Island restaurant in Zhengzhou, China. Customers willing to bet they’re attractive enough to qualify for a free meal have their images sent via a “beauty identification centre” to genuine cosmetic surgeons. Scores are based on 18 different "scientific" criteria and highest-scoring diners eat free.
A London-based Turkish restaurant, Mazi, was derided for sexism and discrimination after advertising for female-only cleaning staff. The boss told a local newspaper: “The reason was we needed to hire a dishwasher and women are obviously better at cleaning than men – that’s what I think anyway… I know from my mum that women are better at cleaning and I know that my girlfriend has to pick up around the house.”
In 2016, the pop-up, “naked” restaurant Amrita in Tokyo declared that once it opened, it would refuse entry to anyone who was 15kg (33 lbs) above the average weight for their height. Guests thought to be overweight would be subjected to the humiliation of being weighed, and if they were deemed overweight, would be asked to leave without a refund. A spokesperson said: “If fat people are allowed in it could be miserable for some guests… We are aiming for a sort of Roman aesthetic." Unsurprisingly, their approach was widely derided.
When it comes to burgers, calorie count and the customers at this Las Vegas restaurant, the bigger the better. Its Octuple Bypass Burger, at 19,900 calories, with 40 slices of bacon, is the most calorific burger in the world. Plus patrons weighing 350 lbs or more eat for free. However, it wasn’t fun and games anymore when a customer died of a heart attack outside the front of the restaurant in 2012.
It's not surprising that a vegan restaurant wouldn’t want to sell animal milk but after Spanish vegan restaurant El Vergel de Tarragona banned parents from bottle-feeding their babies, many customers were incensed. One customer said she felt “humiliated” while another wrote on Facebook: “I am a vegan and I think that, in the case of babies, you are mistaken."
Diners’ dietary requirements should be respected by waiters and chefs, but one chef received death threats after saying she had “spiked” a vegan. The chef, who co-owned and worked at Carlini restaurant in Shropshire, England had spent all day creating an animal product-free menu for a vegan party, so was cross when they decided to opt for a regular cheese pizza. But the backlash from the incident was extreme resulting in the chef's resignation.
The gender pay gap is a very real problem, so one Melbourne café, Handsome Her, decided to take matters into its own hands by charging men a 18% "man tax". Despite managers saying the stunt was to raise awareness, and the extra money going to women’s charities, some diners were not happy. Handsome Her ran successfully for a number of years, but recently closed for good.
The last thing you want to think about while eating is anything to do with a toilet, but Taiwanese restaurant Modern Toilet thinks the opposite. Everything in the restaurant is lavatory-themed, from food served in miniature toilet bowls to suggestively-shaped chocolate desserts. Diners even sit on toilet-shaped seats and eat at glass-covered baths.
In another enraging story, China's Yang Jia Hot Pot Restaurant held a promotional day in which it offered discounts to customers who had the shortest skirts. The discounts offered were based on how many inches of flesh were on display, but social media users in China were not impressed. One of the restaurant’s owners told Munchies: “Women love two things: beauty and tasty food… it’s just a marketing strategy.”
Burger restaurant Solita in Manchester, England is known for running photo competitions with the winner receiving a free lunch for two. At the start of 2018 they held a pet photography contest and banned pictures of pugs, rabbits and rats being entered. A social media meltdown ensued with protesters leaving negative one-star reviews on Facebook. The managers apologised saying it had been tongue-in-cheek and in the past it had excluded reptiles for no reason.
See what other surprising things have been banned in restaurants
In 2018, the owner of now-closed New York dive bar Continental got a bee in his bonnet about customers’ incorrect use of the word “literally”. Finally sick of it, he stuck a notice outside the East Village establishment which read, “Sorry but if you say the word 'literally' inside Continental you have five minutes to finish your drink and then you must leave.” Continental has now shut down, we're unsure whether the manager's attitude to customers has anything to do with it.
A Hawaiian restaurant caused a stir in 2016 by declaring a blanket ban on Donald Trump supporters, posting a notice in the window saying: “If you voted for Trump you cannot eat here!” The policy at Honolulu’s Café 8 1/2 raised eyebrows with some customers, and one wrote: “People should be able to get food without hearing a political message. I will never go back again.” The restaurant has since closed and reopened as Soffritto at a different location.
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We didn’t think this would be possible but a Mongolian barbecue buffet in Brighton, England banned two men from its restaurant because they ate too much. The rugby player and his friend were regulars at Gobi for two years before the manager told them not to come back, branding them “a couple of pigs”. They were said to be eating him out of business and beating other customers to the food.
Usually free from rodents would be at the top of diners’ restaurant requirements, but the aptly named Rat Cafe ignored the status quo when it opened a pop-up in the San Francisco Dungeons complete with plenty of furry creatures scurrying around. The rodents at the café, open for a limited time in summer 2017, came from a rescue organisation for pet rats, but we're not sure how much difference that made to how guests felt about dining with them.